


The Thousand Ways He Dies

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BAMF Violet Hunter, Case Fic, Codes & Ciphers, Cover Art, Cryptography, Drama, Drawing, Embedded Images, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Obsessive Behavior, Story: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Story: The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, Unconventional Spelling Of Elspeth's Name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:36:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It was the dark, cold December of the year 1893, and fate - or rather, the will of our adversary - had brought us to the town of Crewe.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. I suppose I just really like fanart and fancraft.


	2. Wulvers

"He's alive, then," said Bell slowly, spreading the scarf out on his desk. The great blue shadow of a rocking tree swept over his figure.

"...for I do not believe that it could be done by anyone else."

"And nor do I," I said, as if it needed clarification. I had never truly considered the existence of a Moran figure to Cream; to accept that there were more people like this, more admirers of Jesse James's cause, was unthinkable.

He eyed the note with evident doubt before stuffing it in the breast pocket of his lavender waistcoat. Then he examined the scarf.

"Washed quite thoroughly," he informed me in a sour tone. "Lye soap, wooden washboard. Nothing here."

The Doctor walked a full circle around me and stood behind my chair, leaning on its back. His fingers were drumming the wood in a sort of unhappy excitement.

"The nail clippings, hm," he gave a strangled half-chortle, so close to my ear that I had nearly jumped, "not from a corpse, no."

It was dark both in the room and outside; upon some reflection Bell had turned on the gas. In the cold dim light he looked pale and tired, and so, I suspected, did I. It was midnight, after all, and winter.

"If you've no objection," said he, "I shall take the note to myself."

I judged that reasonable. Cream would not have bothered with simple substitution ciphers, and time was needed to make sense of his scribblings. Certainly I was no Doctor; this task was better left to his care.

I was still in a stupor. The sheer easiness with which we had settled into the routine that was so familiar to me from Dunwich and all the other Doctor's cases I had had the fortune of assisting him on felt unnatural. I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that Cream was at it again; that he was alive, alive, by God, and dangerous.

"The wager is lost," the Doctor said, and sat beside me. "I owe you five shillings."

And indeed he had produced from his trouser pocket and offered me a big, beautiful silvery coin with the profile of the Queen. Of course it was nonsense and he owed me nothing; for one, there had been no wager - or at least it hadn't been a wager per se - but I accepted the coin mechanically.

He put his fingertips together.

"The lack of substantial clues undoubtedly means that he hopes for us to go to Crewe."

"But it makes little sense to satisfy his wish, doesn't it, Doctor?"

"So it does; but there isn't much choice. Eastern Cheshire... I bet he likes Lewis Carroll."

"Don't," I warned.

"Don't what?"

"Don't bet,” said I, and he offered a dry, hitching smile.

"Fair enough, Doyle.”

Then suddenly all the humour was gone from his expression, and he lowered his head and frowned; even stunned into insensitivity as I was, I felt a tiny alarm at the idea that he wasn't quite as unshaken by the parcels as he'd have liked me to imagine.

"I shall go," he stated. Knowing, perhaps, that I was about to object, he raised a conciliatory hand. "By no means am I denying you the right to participate. It is just for Cheshire... You oughtn't to be diverted now, Doyle. Already I fear that the quest of bringing Cream down has devoured too much of your life - and then there's Louise; surely you can't abandon her. Making you rush about through the whole great expanse of the Empire would be quite pointless."

"And besides, it was I who brought it upon us."

Again I had no chance of protesting, because he was suddenly waving his hands at me in strange agitation.

"Wheesht, wheesht! I know you only mean well, you're a kind lad. But you cannot dismiss that if you have a grain of reason in you. Had it been not for me, Neill would've never gone to such lengths. It is because he knows that I am capable of following him, am a real threat to his life and his cause, that he does what he does."

I had a brief but violent urge to correct his tenses. Past, it had all happened in the past, and Cream had never been supposed to survive that fire in Dunwich.

"You," he stared glassily into the ceiling, his head thrown back as though he had a nosebleed, "you are boring to him, though he probably likes to torment you. But without me you wouldn't be able to resist; he relies upon you to come to me for help."

He had never voiced that particular concern before, although we were both aware of it. Only now did I realize that I had no arguments against it; every word he told me was God's honest truth.

Nevertheless I stubbornly refused to believe that he could make it better at any point or prevent the murders from occurring. By not existing, perhaps. But that was not a price to be demanded from anyone, and one I wasn't willing to pay.

 

And I dreamt of killing Cream, I dreamt of driving that piece of glass into his throat and ripping his sternomastoid muscles out and severing his jugular vein to make sure nobody would come to harm because of him ever again.

I imagined very vividly how the last choked breath would leave his lungs and how I'd feel his cold wrist to ascertain that his heart had indeed stopped beating.

There was nothing disturbing in the idea; it was not the process of murdering that bothered me. Truth to be told, thinking about it only served to cheer me up in times of darkness. No, the cause of my unease was the chill of the ascending morning that would flood the forests and the fields with brilliant light, leaving me alone with his body. The blank silence in my ears.

There was nothing after Cream's death.

In these dreams, his blood was cooling to dry on my hands, and I saw, with a kind of cold reasonableness, that I had no future after what I’d done.

Once - I was feverish then, and there was a light tint of delirium to my fantasies - the scenario was that the police caught me and that I was tried and sentenced to death by hanging. I awaited the execution amongst petty thieves and robbers; amongst other murderers like me, in a dirty and loud common prison. And, though God knows it should've felt terribly wrong, what with me being a physician, I couldn't bring myself to care. There, I'd killed, and it was but like beautiful emptiness.

I never thought of the Doctor. How he'd react was beyond me to imagine. Sure enough he had once nearly accomplished the task, and another time he had offered to shoot Neill, but on both occasions he had made a point of being as open about his intentions as possible. He had confronted Cream alone with nothing but a cane, and in a fair fight, too, though of course Cream did not deserve fairness.

Sometimes I thought he'd protect me, save me. I knew he could.

 

It was the second time I got my knuckles scratched by an edge of a paper sheet, and I was thinking about getting a pair of gloves. The only consideration that stopped me from doing so was that the task of separating the pages would become considerably harder. And besides, I hate the marks one inevitably leaves on paper when working with his gloves on.

Though I was not to follow the Doctor to Crewe (and nor could I leave Louise, who was becoming increasingly ill), it was clear that my life would soon change. It was only sensible to bring order to the paperwork. There were now four boxes worth of notes and evidence for the Cream affair; the innumerable case files for my patients (indeed, I had to be amazed at how many of these I had managed to collect); and some letters, mostly correspondence between me and Innes and the like.

Innes himself sat on the chair near the window, shaking the snow off his hat and his mittens. His cheeks were aglow with cold and excitement; and he was chatting to me non-stop - about his planned military career, mostly, but also about how he had spent the day and all other kinds of nonsense. I was only happy to oblige, especially since half of the time I wasn't listening at all.

We both knew he was concerned about the appearance of The Final Problem, but I relied upon him to leave this topic out of our conversations.

I had killed Sherlock Holmes. I was a murderer, I was told. It was only disgust that I could bring myself to feel at such accusations. Whatever reasons I might have had for doing what I'd done, they were mine; surely no one was entitled to learning of the more personal aspects of my life just because a crowd of idealistic youngsters happened to be upset over the demise of a rather grotesque fictional character.

But Innes' worry was not over Holmes' end (although I rather thought he was saddened by it) - no, the truth was that he had started to suspect something, and it unsettled me. It was fairly obvious to him, and indeed to anyone who knew the Doctor, where the character of my detective had originated. He was aware of some details of the minor cases; for naturally I could not avoid telling him something, even if it was half a truth, quarter of a truth. All the clues were there, and Innes was smart, and not a child anymore.

I did not blame him. I would've wondered, too, if there was anything to the Reichenbach Falls and the sheer emotion in Watson's claim of considering Holmes "the best and the wisest man".

And certainly to kill a fictional character so heavily based on a real person had been an unco thing to do.

So I was brightly alert the moment I had heard him mention Bell’s name, only to sigh in relief at the realization that the story bore no connection to my anxious reflections. From what I heard I could derive that he had met with the Doctor; I was glad of that.

“He’s terrific at hopscotch,” Innes said with a laugh. “And wolf-whistling, too. I swear I’ve never encountered anyone who’d whistle so well… Isn’t Dr. Joe a hell of an eccentric?”

“Don’t swear,” I said, and then turned to him, dropping the case files. “Bell? _Terrific at hopscotch_?”

“Ay, that he is.”

That wasn’t an idea easy to digest, so I left it alone for the time being. I knew better, of course, than to ask how one played hopscotch in winter – the same way they do it in summer, really, only with a dozen times more fights over the results.

“Innes,” I said, “you are seventeen. Are you saying that Bell-“

“Yes,” he made a smug face. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Well, that’s quite stupid.”

“But fun.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t agree that “Dr. Joe” often behaved queerly, or that I wasn’t grateful to him for entertaining Innes at the time when my happiest dream was to die in an attempt to destroy Cream.

But hopscotch?

I wondered if I was to put Bell’s letters into the “business” pile or amongst other private correspondence; and whether I could ever bring him to whistle in my presence.

 

I could've killed him before, I'd always thought. I could've seen what he was and murdered him.

We would have been sitting in one of the Edinburgh pubs - Old Chain Pier, most likely - and he'd have been smiling at me with that charming, contagious smile of his, telling me one of the slightly crazy theories he had had aplenty, something about how prostitution is connected to the way female characters are treated in fiction (he had always been avid for discussing emancipation and women as such). And then I'd have seen the sheer calculating madness behind the sparkles of laughter in his eyes and strangled him then and there. Maybe I could succeed, the advantage of a surprise attack acting in my favour.

His academic cap would have slid to one side, his curls dishevelled, and he'd have stopped smiling, trying to free himself from my grip. But I wouldn't have let go. Then the innkeeper and our companions would have finally dragged me away from him, but it would've been too late; back then, I wouldn't have wanted him to suffer. Perhaps only a little. I'd have cherished the expression of distress that would have distorted his reddening face when I had squeezed his neck.

And then of course they'd have called the police and arrested me. Nothing would have saved me from the gallows. Not even Bell - and why would he have ever attempted to, surely not out of sympathy? He wouldn't have understod; although maybe there would've been a vague suspicion he'd have briefly experienced, like a reflection of something distant. He's too clever to be clueless about an event like that.

He'd have asked me, perhaps - if he'd ever had a chance - Doyle, why? - and looked at me the way he did upon saying that I was "a kind lad, and only meant well", and I would have wanted to burst into tears because of this sudden sucking feeling, the feeling of a fatal, irremediable mistake. To him, and to everyone else, _I_ would have been Cream. I _would_ have been Cream.

 

As if in an answer to my thoughts, somebody outside gave an exceptionally loud and warbling whistle, the last notes dying down in a lengthy roulade. I looked out of the window, the sunlight and the sheer whiteness of the glazed snow blinding me momentarily, and saw nobody else but the Doctor; he stood on the opposite side of the street, his hands locked on the top of his cane and his cap pulled down in a devil-may-care manner. He smiled at me cunningly - and at Innes, who had virtually thrown himself over the windowsill.

"You could come along," he shouted, "I have apple pie."

Innes gave a snort of sheer delight.

Bell waved at us with his gloved hand in a vaguely beckoning gesture.

"And you, Doyle! My train's tonight."

The train to Crewe, I realized, and immediately forgave him for looking cheerful. It was a mystery to me, though, how he had managed to get the Rector to agree to his leaving the town for an indefinite amount of time so fast; it was either a stroke of tremendous luck or much effort on Bell's part, or possibly both.

I nodded and darted towards our coats, utterly forgetting to put the paperwork away.

"Close the window, Arthur," advised Innes before rushing downstairs with so much noise as though he had accidentally dropped a cupboard.

We slammed the door shut and crossed the street, adroitly dodging a carriage pulled by two grey trotters. The cabbie swore at Innes, and I shook my fist at him, but not too menacingly. It was, after all, our fault, and the trotters could hardly be held accountable, what with the enormous leather blinders they wore.

"Hello," said the Doctor, and clasped both our hands, holding the cane under his arm. "Innes. Doyle."

It is odd, I thought, that he calls Innes by his Christian name and me by our family one; it does seem inconsistent, seeing as technically we both could be referred to as "Doyle".

We couldn't talk about Cream in Innes's presence, of course - he wasn't to know - so we mostly walked in silence, dodging the occasional passers-by and trying not to slip on the icy crust that covered the pavement. On the sides of the street, the snow that fell during the night was still mostly intact, white and sparkling; but the middle of the road was a sheer mess, a semi-liquid mixture of grease, water, all manners of street rubbish, and manure, because the traffic was already quite heavy. Bell manipulated his cane so that we would be safe from the first beggars, mostly street Arabs, whom I would have been taking pity on had I been any wealthier.

Bell never once mentioned The Final Problem to me, though the papers were full of it for quite some time. Once or twice I saw him pointedly ignore the newspaper boys who were shouting their heads off about the “tragic end of Sherlock Holmes”. Thankfully, now the tempest had subsided; and I knew nobody would disturb us with a mention of the wretched story that had put my creation to rest for good.

“Can you,” I inquired with curiosity, turning to the Doctor, “can you whistle louder than what I’ve heard today?”

“Absolutely,” said he amiably, took one of his gloves off and put two fingers in his mouth only to produce a sound that scared me, Innes, a handsome young lady, and a nearby horse.

 

"A friend of mine," said Bell in a strangely purring voice, "wrote about them thus: 'they didn't molest folk if folk didn't molest them'. They were good-natured, timid creatures, the intimidating appearance notwithstanding."

The friend in question, I decided, was probably Jessie M. Saxby, a woman who studied Shetland folk tales. She had constantly been threatening to write a book about the Doctor, an idea to which he reacted with half-feigned horror. _No_ , he would tell me, _what do people think I am, a walking character template? Wasn't it enough when God sent me you with your unfortunate passion for the written word?_

From my position I could see Innes's legs in woollen stockings hanging limply from the couch. I suppose I could've seen his expression, too, if I shifted a little, but I was too sleepy for that, which should have come as no great surprise. I had spent half of the previous night by Louise's side and severely needed rest; but then there was so much to be done during the day that I had neglected that need.

"Would you tell me a wulver story, Dr. Joe?" drawled Innes, bending forward and licking the apple candy from one of his fingers with a furtive look. I did not find it in me to snort in disapproval. "Please?"

"All right," said the Doctor obediently. He didn't seem to be put off by the familiarity of the address. "Long ago, before the battle of Inverlochy, there was a prosperous country land full of decent country folk. As is the way with them, they gossiped about all kinds of subjects and told each other nonsensical stories about non-existent creatures."

"It was only in a few of those accounts that a grain of truth could be found, and one of these few was the story of the wulvers."

"They never showed themselves to folk; but, though they were appalling to the eye, their heads being lupine and their bodies covered in brown hair, their hearts were kind and their life peaceful. Often they would save a man lost on a night of foul weather or bring fish to the poor and put it on the windowsill."

  
"So they lived side by side for many years and would have lived for many more to come had a great woe not befallen the land. The best of the folk started to do ill; the worst turned into beast-like creatures with no sense and no mercy. The cattle had all turned sick, and the crop was so poor that fishing was the only way to save one and one's family from starvation."

"But the worst thing of all, laddie, was that wulvers, too, started to change. Some of them found it in their hearts to remain kind, for they were indeed good and harmless beings; and yet there were others, ones that did not resist the disease, and they turned out to be the most dangerous of all."

"Only now did the folk discover how much strength the creatures possessed. They would go about, ravaging whole villages and killing everyone in their way, mindless and bloodthirsty. They knew not reason, so they ate all the crop and all the cattle and all the yield they could find; many of them died in agony of eating the attractive blood-red berries of spurge flax. But in their place there came many more, and there was no escape from them for the frail and the powerless."

"And thus came the time when people could not bear the woe anymore. They went to the forest river where wulvers lived, and cried foul; and threatened to tear the remaining wulvers apart if they did not put an end to that misery."

"The wulvers were reluctant to reveal their secret, but finally, seeing that there would be no salvation for them, gave in. The woe shall end, they said, if the one greatest and maddest wulver is sacrificed."

"They joined forces with the villagers and went to the place where the creature habitually rested. All took their pitchforks and axes and knives, but, when they came and saw how big and appalling the wulver was, fear had all but overtaken them. The creature awoke, and look'd at them with its red eyes burning like the fire of Hell, and gave a mighty roar that scared them mindless. Many a man fled, abandoning their friends and their cause. Still, the wulvers gathered the remaining folk and told them that if they wanted to put an end to the great woe, there would be no other way to do so. Folk took heart, and in their desperate courage they came upon the creature."

"Though many died and many were wounded, with joined forces they overcame him and tied him up with ropes. Knowing that wulvers are but immortal, they took him, bleeding and furious, and put him into a sack with heavy stones and threw him into a deep lake."

"In horror they saw that the water of the lake had instantly turned the darkest of darks and that great waves started lurking on its surface, licking the shores and seeking to devour the folk and the wulvers. Terrified, they fled the forest and never set foot onto the shores of the lake again."

"The woe was over. The wulvers continued to live there and help folk, and folk did not molest the wulvers. Their cattle got better, and so did their crop."

"But they say even now, Innes, that the dark water of the lake had not ceased to seek its prey and that if you see a dark brook in a forest, you better not try to slake your thirst with its savoury coolness."

Silence was his answer; Innes was deaf to that questionable advice. He had, as I could see now that I turned to look at them, fallen asleep long ago, his head resting on Bell's shoulder. This sight produced a strange sweet, hitching sensation in my chest, like a brief touch of envy.

"How is he seventeen," I said with quiet confusion, my intonation half-questioning. "He is going to join the army the next year, you know that?"

The Doctor sighed, then shrugged, careful not to disturb Innes's sleep.

"He's a perfectly capable lad," he whispered back upon some reflection. "He has reason in him, and knows how to live, too. He'll be all right."

For a while we kept silent. I took the last piece of the apple pie and drunk the cold tea with what I imagine must've been a resentful look. I rarely regretted being the older brother; but this was undoubtedly one of these rare times.

"You just made that all up, didn't you?"

"Of course I made it up," said the Doctor with dignity. "No harm in that."

"Before the battle of Inverlochy, eh?"

"Before the battle of Inverlochy."


	3. Violet Hunter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book!canon has the real-life timeline screwed up. Doyle says that Benjamin is dead, which would suggest that the subsequent events take place in 1893 or later on; but the book version of Cream is still alive despite the fact that the real Cream was executed in 1892.
> 
> Also, at first I went with the year 1882 because at one point Cream said that he had read about Jesse James's death "recently in a newspaper". Well whatever. Apparently he has a habit of reading old newspapers in his leisure time.
> 
> [this story is, like, a mixture of book! and TV! canons, the same way some of my other works are. It is post-The Dark Water for the books and post-White Knight Stratagem for the series.]

I ran onto the pavement, waving at a hansom pulled by, it seemed, one of the yester grey trotters. It stopped, and a tall ginger cabbie leant over from the dickey, contemplating me with obvious condescension.

"Charing Cross," I said shortly, throwing him two shillings. Then I produced the Doctor's coin from my pocket and showed it to him: "A fiver if you can make it in ten minutes."

Under any other circumstances I wouldn't have been keen on the idea of dare-devil galloping through the streets of London, but then I couldn't care less. I noticed that there was blood on my fingers and my sleeves; it didn't help my mood. I was sure the Doctor would notice it, too.

 

Though he made it in eleven, I judged that he deserved the five shillings for following the spirit of the instruction if not the letter of it. Then I took the little luggage I had with me and hurried towards the train that had already stood at the station, the locomotive facing north-west towards Luton. For Saturday evening, the crowd of passengers was oddly big, and I had to stumble around for quite some time - in the end I was afraid I'd have to find the Doctor when we arrived in Crewe. It wouldn't be more trouble than finding him then and there; but deep down I knew I needed his company for that journey, or else I'd be too absorbed in thoughts for my own good.

There were times when I was grateful that he could look at me and see things I could never tell him.

"Doyle," he said quietly, blinking in surprise, and then frowned. "Doyle, I am ever so sorry."

I believed him, and I wished I could clasp his hand without letting him see the blood.

 

After that I decided that there was no point in trying to behave normally (as if there had ever been any point in that) and fell silent, staring in the window. Submissively I allowed Bell to pay for the tickets; and I knew, of course, that this journey was only the beginning, that from this moment on everything we did was Work, not Life. I could let myself be paid for.

The chilly winter evening was dawning upon England when our train started off. I wasn't looking at the empty landscapes outside, but rather at the vague, flashing reflections in the thickness of the glass: they became clearer now against the cold darkness. The Doctor, who at first buried himself in a fresh newspaper, was now studying me for quite a while.

"It won't do, Doyle," he finally said with a sigh, and rummaged in his bag only to produce a stack of papers and a notebook. I turned my attention to him, wondering hazily whatever he was on about, and found him offering me brandy in a flask lid. For a moment I contemplated it.

"It won't do," he repeated. "You know very well nothing good's going to come out of these regrets."

I stared at his wrists.

"I can tell you what I think about the cipher."

Truth to be told, at first I was afraid he'd talk about Edith, but he appeared to be well aware of how different the situations were. And I nodded gratefully to his proposal.

He looked at me briefly, then produced a perfectly white handkerchief and a flask, wetted the handkerchief and reached out for my hand. Obedient, I gave it to him and sipped the brandy. The wet fabric felt cold against my skin. The Doctor was wiping the blood, of course; it was foolish of me to hope to conceal it from him.

I did feel a little better.

"I wonder what other useful objects you're in habit of carrying on your person," I said listlessly.

"A bottle of sal ammoniac," responded the Doctor with a shrug. "That's what every physician must be able to provide should somebody faint in close proximity."

It sounded like a reasonable idea.

"Now, the cipher," said he, letting go of my hand. He then extracted from the stack and handed me the object I was well familiar with: a square and otherwise inconspicuous sheet of paper covered in carefully penciled letters. When I had received the parcel, I could make neither had nor tail of it. Unlike some of the ciphering schemes I'd learnt of through my association with the Doctor, this one left whole words and even sentences intact - to no great triumph of the cryptanalist: the resulting text was but absolutely incomprehensible.

Certainly it was no substitution cipher. I had considered, of course, the possibility that it was one of those ciphers that required a specific key, a text; but I had not a clue as to how to approach the process of decoding.

"You had a chance to study it, I understand; what is your opinion?"

"I think," I answered, "it cannot be decoded without the knowledge of a specific key. One must know - the principle according to which the letters should be rearranged, perhaps; or eliminated. It isn't humanly possible to try all the combinations there are."

"Almost correct." He squinted at me. "Half-correct. Your mathematics are reasonable - with the one hundred and fifty-nine letters in this note, it would take one hundred and fifty-nine factorial combinations to solve the cipher by trial and error. This is a work that cannot be accomplished in a lifetime. And you are right, in some sense, when you are saying that the knowledge of a specific key is required; but it is a key easily obtained."

There was a subtle but distinct change in his manner of speech, one I remembered so well from his University lessons. Old habits die hard, he once told me.

It is perhaps true that I should not have tolerated his lecturing tone; but I guessed he wanted to help, and I needed that distraction, too.

"Are you at all familiar with the Morse code, Doyle?"

My knowledge in this regard came down to having a casual acquaintance from the Royal Navy, I informed him. I could only be astonished at the vast amount of seemingly useless information Bell was in possession of; what _he_ had learnt the code for was hard to imagine.

"Doesn't matter," said the Doctor. "The system is very simple. You see, it is not the contents of the note that matter; it is the grammar pattern."

"You mean to say that the stops have a meaning," I responded slowly. "Don't you?"

"Indeed. Each - let's call them sentences, for lack of a better term - each sentence in this text is a Morse letter. The structure of the "sentences" is based on syntactic alternation: phrases containing predicates are dashes; phrases that only contain grammatical subjects are dots."

I surveyed the note hurriedly.

Amalgamation of revolt began - dash - claws and wolves - dot - no man will stay - dash - the forests deep - dot.

"Double dash-and-dot combination," I summarized after some calculation. "What is it?"

"C," said the Doctor, and sighed. "I must warn you, Doyle, that the note contains nothing of interest. Had it not been so, I would've told you right away."

It was common sense, of course, but I cannot deny that I felt a pang of sharp disappointment. Despite myself, I had taken both the note and the process of deciphering to heart.

All the same, I took out a pencil from my breast pocket and proceeded with translating the text, if only for the sake of having something to do. The Doctor was observing me, motionless.

Dot, dash, dot. Dot. Dot, dash, dash. Dot.

I wrote it down:

"C - x1 - x2 - x3 - x2".

 

 

 

"Crewe," drawled I. "Not exactly a valuable piece of information, no."

"So it isn't," he said apologetically. I decided that trying to smile at him wouldn't be a good idea, first and foremost because I had no clue if I would be able to. For a while we were silent. I had drunk the brandy and was resisting the urge to start playing with the flask lid.

"Anything interesting?" I asked finally, alluding to his copy of the Times. He gave an eloquent shrug.

"Some more fuss over the Matabele affair." He picked the newspaper up and read aloud in his pleasant, perfectly trained voice: "The Shangani Patrol: There Were No Survivors".

"God, no. Not again. How many?"

"Thirty-four."

He was frowning now, and I worried that it might have cut him to the quick, what with Benjamin's death that summer; though I knew that he took it badly, I was quite clueless as to what he had thought or felt, for obviously he had no inclination to talk to me about it.

It appeared, however, that in some inexplicable way the talk about the Matabele reminded him of a different problem entirely.

"About that note, Doyle. There's one more thing I'd like to consider: namely, that it is a double cipher and there is some other key still to be discovered. Perhaps the references to Crewe are not quite useless after all."

I could not help but think that the insistence with which Cream was trying to lure us into Cheshire was ominous, and that undoubtedly what he had in mind for us was not clues but an imminent and painful death, but I didn't tell this to the Doctor. We both knew the possibility of being murdered was all too real.

"I think he's becoming desperate," said Bell. "He preserved the outward elements of the game, but there are changes that make me think it is but pretense; he ceased to enjoy the process."

"I wish I were sure you are right," I responded bitterly. He gave me a sharp look, his eyes flashing with something intense.

"Don't wish for that, Doyle. It is dangerous; more dangerous, perhaps, than any of our previous encounters with him. He will do anything in his power to defeat us, to hurt us, to make us suffer. The one thing _I_ wish for is to be proved wrong."

But of course there was little chance of that happening.

 

The rest of the journey had passed in silence, and it was well past ten when we got off the train on the Crewe railway station. The air was full of fog and relatively warm; I knew the snow must've been sticky enough for making snowballs.

We were starting to walk along the path that, Bell informed me, led to Crewe Arms when Bell's eye alighted on something that evoked his interest. He stopped in his tracks and turned back a little way. I followed his example; and there it stood, a small carriage with a black horse. Most surprisingly, it was driven by a tall young woman, whose face - as I could see now that we came closer - was powdered with pretty freckles and lit with an equally pretty smile. Her chestnut hair was cut very short. A serious illness, most likely, I thought with sympathy.

The Doctor greeted her, and so did I, although I still failed to see what it was that he had deemed worthy of his engagement.

"My name is Joseph Bell," said he, taking his hat off; suddenly she started and raised a hand to her mouth.

"Joseph Bell!" she cried, "Not the Dr. Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University?"

"Indeed I am," the Doctor confirmed, and narrowed his eyes. "Do I have the honour of knowing you, Miss..?"

"Violet Hunter. No, you do not, but I know you, Doctor, and am pleased by this unlikely meeting. Some seven years ago you helped a friend of mine when she was in dire need of help and had nobody to turn to. You won't happen to remember an Evelyn Courtenay?"

"Why, I remember her very well," he answered with animation. "A murder accusation, wasn't it? How is she?"

"Married and settled in London. Her husband made a fortune in sea trade."

"Well, I'm glad of that, and glad that I could be of service. Give her my regards, if you have a chance. But what I wanted to ask, Miss Hunter, was whether you'd mind if we joined you? It was a change of circumstances that brought us here; and we're quite new to the town."

"Of course," she smiled, silvery vapour curling around her lips. "I'll drive you there. I drive myself these days; Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle, my employers, spend most of their time in London, and somebody needs to pick up the correspondence. Your companion is Mr. Benjamin Bell, I understand?"

The Doctor did not at once answer her.

"No," I responded hurriedly, "I'm Arthur Doyle, Dr. Bell's colleague. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Hunter."

"Benjamin died five months ago," said the Doctor. "As a lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders."

Her face fell.

"I'm very sorry," she said.

For a moment Bell seemed to be unsure what to say - in fact, he looked so lost that I wanted to advise him to settle for a customary "thank you" - and then offered her a strange half-smile. It only served to upset me further; I doubted briefly if the story of the Shangani Patrol had not affected him after all.

On our way to Crewe he asked her all sorts of things - to me, it resembled a full-blown interrogation rather than a conversation, but she looked happy enough. I looked at him a couple of times to make sure he wasn't distressed by Miss Hunter's unfortunate mistake, though of course I wouldn't be able to tell if he didn't want me to see. And, indeed, there was nothing to be derived from his expression. It was that of polite interest - Miss Hunter had just begun her account of how she came to work as a governor for the Rucastle family.

"I placed an advertisement in a newspaper," she explained, growing pink from the cold. "I was alone and I needed money, but nobody would make me an offer. Though I do know some German and some French, it seemed to be insufficient to those few who responded... in the end came Mr. Rucastle, and the sum he offered me was so significant that I couldn't bring myself to seek employment elsewhere, odd though some parts of my contract might be."

"Odd?" repeated the Doctor, and his aquiline face sharpened with interest.

Miss Hunter looked at us hazily, apparently regretting bringing the topic up; I knew she must've felt like she was gossiping about her employers, and it was to my pleasure that the fact had bothered her. I think I started to like her - she seemed to be an independent-minded woman, and not at all a stupid one.

"I wouldn't wish to talk about that," she told him finally, smiling as a way of apology. "But tell me, Dr. Bell, what is your business in Crewe?"

To my utter amazement, the Doctor told her quite openly that we were in pursuit of a dangerous criminal who, as we happened to know, might've at some point resided in the town. Miss Hunter didn't seem taken aback by that, though her light eyes had certainly clouded with concern, and for a moment she was frowning uneasily.

"Ah, I see," said she. "I hope your mission proves to be successful, and I wish you every luck."

 

"We're going to converse with her, anyway," he answered to my anxious questions. The snow had hardened slightly in the cold and was now creaking under our feet. It was just on time that we reached Crewe; by no means was I dressed adequately for such weather, and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The idea of catching a chill on the very first day didn't seem very appealing. "How likely was she to believe that I came here for any other reason, seeing as she knows the details of the Evelyn Courtenay case?"

I had not the faintest idea as to what the case in question was, and indeed I had been unaware there was any Evelyn Courtenay, but I deemed it unreasonable to remind him of that. And I was not thinking of his cases. Instead I contemplated the town of Crewe we were about to enter with its small brick and wooden houses that all looked equally black in the clarity of the night. It was an industrial town, one created out of a tiny village in the beginning of the age of steam.

So such was the beginning of our hunt; either we would destroy Cream completely or would be destroyed ourselves, and God knows what I had feared more.

"Doctor," I said, turning to him, "in Dunwich, when I thought that you were killed, it occurred to me that we had spent years on this unhappy quest... and that there weren't many unrelated cases during this time I could assist you on."

He stood very still, staring at me. We didn't discuss this topic often, and I was afraid of his possible reaction; but I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't tell him that.

"And," I continued, "should we come to harm in Crewe, I want you to know that it wasn't because of Neill that I joined. Although we may have our disagreements, and you may not be the kindest and most sympathetic person, I'm infinitely grateful for having known you and worked with you."

The Doctor's expression was a sight to see, and yet undeniably he was touched.

"Thank you," he said after a while, in a changed voice. "Thank you, my dear Doyle; I'm happy it wasn't just Neill."

 

After it had become clear that Cream had survived our encounter in the small Eastern town of Dunwich, there was another influx of dreams and fantasies of all sorts, of the what-ifs I needed and hated. There had been so many missed opportunities of murdering him, and the range of possible methods had been very wide. I could've prevented him from killing others; but I hadn't done so.

Though the Doctor seemed to be dispirited by the development, there was no indication that he had entertained similarly violent thoughts. In my dreams, it was always I who broke down and murdered our adversary; and it came as something of a surprise when Bell told me that he was prepared to shoot him in front of witnesses. Back then, the idea had but amused me; but I think now that his impulse was admirable in many ways, and if his words about following the line of reason sounded ludicrous then, it was only because the mission he undertook was so hopeless and required so much courage.

Sometimes I imagined - briefly - what would've become of us if he were to murder Neill. That had been mere inches of difference on the cliffs in Dunwich - and undoubtedly that difference would have been between his life and death, too; if Cream perished, the same fate would have befallen the Doctor. After that... I wasn't sure what would have happened then; what would have happened to me, and if I would have been able to restore the Doctor's good name.

And what was it that he planned to do upon shooting Cream? In the eyes of everyone, _he_ would be the murderer. Surely he wouldn't choose the gallows? Surely he wouldn't choose the-

But then there was the image of Cream, in our hands, at our mercy, helpless. And I suddenly doubted that, should there be a choice, I would prefer to give him to the police, or that I would care what happened to me thereafter. All I could see was the sparks of life and laughter in his features, and more than anything else I wanted to extinguish them, to make his eyes look just as dead and deformed as the rest of his face I imagined must've been.


	4. The Strange Case of Percy Bysshe Shelley

I woke up early next morning and couldn't lull myself back to sleep even though I felt it could do me good. One thought bothered me; I revisited again our past encounters with Cream and asked myself why the Doctor had decided that going to Crewe was the right thing to do.

I hadn't questioned it at the time: I had been too preoccupied with my own problems to argue with him. Now, however, I became aware that Neill had every opportunity to accomplish whatever it was that he had come to the town for and flee, leaving us empty-handed. Such was his strategy, and indeed the Doctor himself had told me that chasing him without more substantial clues would only serve to drain us financially and morally.

Thanks to these doubts, now I was fully awake - if somewhat out of sorts - and so I climbed out of the bed and dressed. Clearly there was little hope to get more rest. And now that the dreams of the past night were gone from my mind I noticed with a touch of worry that I was slightly unwell. My throat was sore, my eyes ached, and I had sneezed once or twice; I began to suspect it was something other than common cold. The observation darkened my mood, as did the pale flat daylight flooding the room.

Sighing, I thought it would be sensible to go and find the Doctor before my day would have a chance of getting any worse.

 

He nodded at me, businesslike, and resumed his studies of the paperwork scattered on his desk. As far as I could see, it was mostly his old notes on the cases related to Cream's persona; but there was also the cryptic text and, strangely, a map of Crewe as well as some papers I had difficulty identifying.

It was obvious enough that he'd have liked me to leave him to his work, but I didn't fancy roaming around until he could spare me some of his time. So I pulled out a chair and sat on the opposite. Surprise was written on his face as he shifted his gaze to me; it was as if he'd just remembered that I was in the room.

"Morning, Doyle," he said, settling back. "You're early."

"I'm feeling ill," I told him, "so I couldn't sleep. And I wanted to talk to you, anyway."

The Doctor frowned and leant his elbows on the desk to observe me more closely.

"Symptoms?"

"Sore throat, mostly. Sneezing. I haven't checked the temperature yet, but I think it may be slightly higher than usual. That's all unimportant, though; and it can hardly be helped."

"The first is untrue," he replied, "but you're right about the second. If there's one ailment nobody's going to be able to cure in the next couple of decades, it is pharyngitis... Drink something hot, though."

Sourly I waved the suggestion off. Of course I knew very well that I was being childish and that it was vital for our purposes that we both be on our feet, but I was too impatient to clarify all the aspects of the Cream matter to care.

"If you are so intent on distracting me from my work," said Bell, before I could even open my mouth, "you should probably know that I do not consider this case similar to what has happened before; not to Hanbury, not to Dunwich. I decided to come to Crewe because I am quite confident that Cream has no inclination of teasing us. He intends to strike, and strike hard; it is only a matter of time that he does something to attract our attention and provoke an open confrontation. I am only afraid what he'll do shall not be to our liking."

"So am I," I answered, ignoring the fact that he'd deduced what I was going to ask. It is not that I found the habit unnerving - rather, it amused me - but I did think it was a bit impolite, and I was in no mood to listen to his explanations.

The Doctor gestured vaguely.

"But, in your own words, it can hardly be helped. And indeed it is not Cream we are going to encounter first."

After that he'd utterly refused to continue the conversation or even explain what he meant. Instead, much to my annoyance, he ushered me to my own room, made me tea and insisted that I put a scarf on. On the one hand, I was grateful, especially since he had also fetched me some cheese and bread; on the other hand, it irked me immensely that he himself wore nothing but a shirt, neglected to eat the breakfast and, above all, had immediately gone back to his room to continue whatever strange reflections he'd been previously absorbed in.

He was nothing like Holmes (and thankfully, he was not in a habit of smoking until there was more smoke than air around him), but in his own manner he could very well be insufferable.

And I hated being left alone, because all I could think of now were the events of the previous day, and because I kept remembering Louise.

 

In a couple of hours both of the Doctor's predictions proved right, which, naturally, should not have amazed me nearly as much as it did. But my reaction was excusable; for the last person I'd expected to visit us was our new acquaintance Miss Hunter.

I stared as she crossed the street, her movements fast and determined. She wore a narrow dress of dark velvety blue and a light-blue scarf, and seemed even taller than yesterday.

"Whom did you have in mind when you told me that it wasn't Cream we were going to meet with?" I inquired, hoping weakly that he'd name someone else.

"Violet Hunter, of course," said he in a tone of friendly indifference. He wasn't even looking at the window.

I sighed and walked towards the door so as to hear the quiet clatter of her heels on the wooden stairs. After some ten seconds she was standing still, and immediately she knocked, softly but with confidence. I opened the door and welcomed her inside.

The smile the Doctor gave her I recognised as one reserved for important witnesses. So she was not a chance meeting, after all; though I was clueless as to whether her appearance was in any way related to Cream, and the idea that Bell would direct his attention to any minor cases at such a time displeased me.

The daylight revealed still more freckles on Miss Hunter's pale skin and perhaps made her slightly less appealing. But there was something very lively and expressive in the way her blue eyes flashed at us; and in the hard line of her thin, strong mouth.

"Good morning, gentlemen," said she, "I'll state my case without further delay, if you permit."

With a courteous nod Bell indicated that she proceed.

“Over the course of the last week, many odd and even eerie events have happened to me. Of course I have tried to think of reasonable explanations; unfortunately, I found none of them satisfactory. I decided to bring the matter to your attention, Dr. Bell, remembering how you helped poor Evelyn – such mysteries, I understand, are something of your speciality.”

“One could say so,” said the Doctor evasively. “But tell me, Miss Hunter, what were these eerie occurrences that alarmed you enough to seek our help?”

"Why, just this morning I was a witness to a most peculiar event that, I fear, was caused by nothing else but my appearance - though in what way exactly I cannot possibly explain. I was on my way to the Hightown Church; in order to get there, I needed to pass the cemetery - I usually take the shorter path that leads straight through it."

"It was quite empty today, what with the early hour and the chill of the weather, but midway through the bunch of cypresses that grow closer to the southern exit I was alarmed by somebody's cry. Had you heard it, gentlemen, you would've surely understood my sentiment: the voice was that of a person in immediate and deathly danger."

"Naturally I turned, looking for the unfortunate stranger to determine the source of his fright and see if I could be of any help. What I saw was a small old lady in a grey shawl - she stood some twenty feet behind me, motionless and absolutely thunderstruck. She was looking straight at me, her eyes full of terror; it was as if I were a ghost or some other vile creature."

"I suppose I made a mistake by trying to approach her, though at the time I was driven only by my wish to help. Seeing that I was coming towards her, the lady moved back, imploring me not to walk any farther, and before I could say a word, turned away from me and fled with such swiftness that it would be quite futile for me to try and follow her."

“How odd,” I said, when she finished her account. “Is it possible that she was a lunatic?”

Miss Hunter sighed.

“I have considered that,” she said. “It is possible, that much is true; but she looked no more insane than you or Dr. Bell – just distraught with fear. And it was only the most recent of all the strange things that I have witnessed.”

From the expression on the Doctor’s face I could tell that his interest was piqued. I wondered if he had already thought of some plausible explanation; and if there was one at all.

“Are you quite sure, Miss Hunter, that you do not know who the lady was?” he inquired. “Perhaps her face seemed familiar - or her voice?”

But Miss Hunter only shook her head:

“No; I am certain I had never met her before in my life.”

“I see. But please continue – it is necessary that we learn the full story.”

"When yesterday I refused to talk to you about some of the more questionable aspects of my job, it was because I felt that in doing so I would be betraying the trust of my employers needlessly. But I thought it over and have arrived at but one conclusion: that there is some foul play on somebody’s part and that I am not prepared to remain in the dark any longer."

"As far as I understood, your agreement with Mr. Rucastle included some requirements the purpose of which appeared to you unclear," said the Doctor, jumping to his feet in animation, "such as cutting your hair off."

A crease of surprise had formed on her high forehead.

"How could you possibly know that was a part of the contract, Dr. Bell?"

"The conversation with you has convinced me that you are no suffragette," shrugged he, "and you are too brimming with health to have recently recovered from a serious illness. You're not in any kind of financial trouble. Why else would you cut it?"

"Indeed it is so," Miss Hunter smiled. "In the past I received many compliments on its richness and unusual colour, a peculiar kind of chestnut. I was both taken aback and upset when my employer told me that cutting it short was imperative if I wanted to qualify for his offer, but what was I to do? At least now I have money."

"But surely this was not the fact that alerted you to the possibility of dishonest manipulations?"

"So it wasn’t;" she said, "little I knew that there were more uncanny things to occur."

The Doctor raised his hand: "if I may," said he, "I'd ask you to tell us more about these – and please do include all the details that struck you as odd, no matter how insignificant they appear to be.”

Miss Hunter, who, unlike me, didn’t know about the Method, looked puzzled, but nevertheless obeyed the request.

"The first oddity - apart from Mr. Rucastle's demand regarding my haircut, of course - was when he told me that on certain days of the week I'd have to accompany them on a walk to a nearby alder grove. It is not that I minded the walk; but he absolutely insisted that I wear a certain dress, and not mine, either. Mrs. Rucastle gave it to me - a very pretty electric-blue cloth made of something like beige - and the strange thing, Dr. Bell, is that I am quite certain I know to whom it had belonged before. Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle have recently suffered a personal loss; their daughter, Alice, died of nervous exhaustion. Mrs. Rucastle herself is too short in height to have worn it, and so I could only conclude that it had been worn by Alice Rucastle... And I confess that it did seem to me strange, in the worst sense of the word, that they'd give me a dress of their late daughter."

At this point I noticed that the Doctor became all but absorbed in the queer tale, and he was frowning in a mixture of worry and curiosity, pacing back and forth in front of her. Such a development was not to my liking; I swore silently that, unless he told me that it had something to do with Cream, I'd talk him out of engaging in the case of Violent Hunter. We had not come to Crewe for this purpose, and nor was keeping up this acquaintance safe for Miss Hunter herself.

"But it was not the end of the story. When we came to the grove, they walked there for a while, asking me to play with the child - it is poor Alice's daughter I was hired to look after - and came back after some half an hour; then Mr. Rucastle linked his arm through mine and led me away from where Mrs. Rucastle stood with Heather."

"'My dear Miss Hunter,' he told me, 'I have to ask you to do us a small favour. It won't be of any inconvenience to you, I believe, and it will only take ten or fifteen minutes; but you must do everything I tell you exactly the way I say.'"

"I told him that I'd be glad to be of service if it was indeed that simple."

"‘Do you know any poetry?’"

"‘I know much poetry, in fact,’ I answered. ‘And I took great interest in Percy Bysshe Shelley when I was younger; I still remember most of his works by heart.’"

"Such answer seemed to please him immensely."

"‘Ah, excellent!’ said he, ‘I knew I was not mistaken when I chose you. Now please stand under this oak and recite whatever you wish; whichever poems you like best. Do not mind the fact that I’ll go walking – it is not for me, but for Heather. My wife believes that listening to classic poetry may do her good.'"

"Though all of this sounded to me very suspicious, I could not fathom what harm could come out of this, and so I obeyed. I was reciting for about twelve minutes when they returned; they both looked very happy, and Mr. Rucastle thanked me heartily. I was extremely puzzled by the whole episode."

"The walks to the grove continuted, and so did the recitations. Once, for the sake of an experiment, I decided to stop the instance they would be out of sight. So I did; and I hardly believed my eyes when Mr. Rucastle came running back and shouted at me with much anger!"

"'It is such a small favour, Miss Hunter,' he told me, his big face turning purple, 'why, we don't ask much of you at all; it is really quite indecent of you to be so negligent of your duties.'"

"I wanted to tell him that, strictly speaking, I was hired as a governor to the child, not as their servant, but I refrained from doing so. Frankly, his anger had scared me. I'd never seen him quite that furious."

"But what is the oddest part of the whole episode – and I wish you wouldn’t laugh at me, Dr. Bell, implausible though my words may sound – is that I am certain that Mr. Rucastle could’ve neither seen nor heard that I stopped talking."

The Doctor had suddenly come to a halt in front of her, shifting from heel to toe in a sort of agitated swing.

"How!" cried he, "are you sure? Ah, but of course; do forgive my indiscretion. It is just that the events you recount form such a peculiar picture.”

She sighed tremulously, shifting her gaze from Bell to me and back again. Clearly the account had excited her; her breast was heaving, and her cheeks grew pink, quite the way I remembered from yesterday.

"Such is the story, gentlemen," said she. "I don't know what you'll make of it; it is all very puzzling.”

"Indeed," said the Doctor, smiling with equal excitement. "And I thank you, Miss Hunter, for coming here. You might have done us, and the possible subject of these manipulations, a great service by doing so."

 

The instance she was gone, the Doctor - sensing undoubtedly that I was about to argue with him and that I wasn't in the best of moods - slipped his coat on and fastened the cape on his throat, heading for the door.

"No," I protested indignantly, "you can't just run away. Do you think I'm blind? I saw perfectly well how interested you were."

He turned on his heels, his lips thinning. "So what if I was? It doesn't mean that I'm going to act on that."

"Doesn't it?"

One long sceptical silence later he lowered his head a little in a gesture strangely apologetic. "Yes, fine, you're correct. I'll take it."

There was little pretence of considering - or even listening to - my opinion, and this was enough to get me heated. I suspect I must've been more ill than I imagined, because it was not unusual for Bell to employ such categorical wording; normally I would have let it slide.

"You've no right," I said hotly. "Surely you can't neglect our main case in favour of investigating the curious adventure of a scaremonger governess."

The instance I saw his expression change from guilty to defiant I knew I had made a mistake, but it was too late to take my words back.

"I can assure you, Doyle, that the girl is but smart and cautious," said he. "And I would've understood your indignation very well if there had indeed been a 'main case'; but, seeing as Cream has not yet resurfaced, I fail to see how helping Miss Hunter in any way damages our cause."

Truth to be told, I had nothing to say against that reasoning. I gave a defeated sigh and rose to come closer.

"Where are you going?" I asked, playing with my gloves. He gazed at me intently, and I guessed that my expression had betrayed my alarm; so I lifted my head to look at him, feeling for all the world like the worst of his students.

"Ay," I told him miserably, "I know, Bell- don't scold me. It is a kneejerk reaction. My nerves are fairly shot after two days in this damned town; I could hardly help it."

"I didn't have anything specific in mind," he answered after some pause, his tone soft. "But it would be against my better judgement to allow you to come. Though fresh air would do you good, and certainly your spirits would lift, I do think it would also help your malaise to develop into a full-blown influenza."

"I'm not nearly that ill, Doctor. Nothing's going to happen to me if I walk for a while."

He made a sour face.

"You know perfectly well that I am not saying this out of any overly strong worry for your precious wellbeing," said he, "I'm a trained professional, and a damn good one, too. I know a sick person when I see one."

"I don't believe that you can predict such subtle things correctly," challenged I, knowing that hurting his pride was the best way to get him to do something he would otherwise refuse to do. I nearly laughed at how right my calculations proved to be: instantly the Doctor pouted and threw his head back, his white curls flinching with, it seemed, the same irritation that reflected in his eyes.

"Very well, Doyle," he said disdainfully, "you'll see yet that I do not make medical mistakes, lest you should doubt my expertise in the future. But mark my words, it shall be at your cost."

I nodded - in enthusiasm, I'm afraid - and took my coat from the stand to follow him. There were still some traces of inner struggle in his expression; his eyebrows twitched, and he gave me a doleful look.

"Take the scarf," he demanded finally. I had to remind myself again that laughing would spoil the effect and was hence inadvisable.

 

The air was colder than yesterday but still quite damp, and small curls of mist were scattering from under my feet as I walked. I had an odd feeling of stepping into the waters of a shallow brook.

Crewe was not nearly as much of a grim industrial town as I had feared. Indeed it was quite gratifying to the eye, what with its broad streets and small plain houses criss-crossed with black beams. We walked down what seemed to be called Badger Avenue and turned into a Henry Street; and there we saw the confirmation of the Doctor's second prediction.

It was a fairly big crowd, and everyone was shouting and talking excitedly, so we did not at once understand the cause of all the havoc. But there appeared a tense spring to the Doctor's step; and the instance I heard the sharp sound of a police whistle I knew that we had stumbled across a crime scene, though of what crime I did not want to guess.

In all honesty, I would've gladly left Henry Street behind. Entangling myself in more investigations was the last thing in the world I wished to do, especially since the walk was pleasant and Bell was unusually elated. But of course he would have none of it - already he made a rush for the crowd, waved his cane and informed everyone in close proximity that he was a medical man and so had the right to pass.

So many people stepped aside that I had to wonder as to what they were thinking; the excuse was nonsense; we had no business interfering with the work of the local police. The Doctor just had a knack, I suppose, for convincing those around that he had some kind of authority while in truth he had none.

 

I followed him. He walked with long strides into the very heart of the crowd and stepped onto the bare snow in the middle; then he suddenly froze. I saw his fingers straighten as though he were about to slap someone on the face.

"Who are you?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

"Dr. Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University," the Doctor responded flatly, and made a step forward. "A friend of Inspector Warner's."

Though I highly suspected the constable (given it was one) had not a clue as to who the devil Inspector Warner was, and though the whole statement was a bit of an oversimplification on the Doctor's part, we were left to be. I still didn't see the body (and by now I was fairly certain it was a murder).

"Bell," I called with some worry. Before I could say anything else he had reached his hand for me, took me roughly by the wrist and virtually dragged me into the empty circle.

The first thing I saw was how much blood there was. Apparently it had been soaking the snow until it reached the pavement; it was mostly red, and brown in the few places where it started to curdle. In the midst of the blood spot there was the body, a naked middle-aged man with his chest covered in wounds.

"Look," hissed the Doctor, "look at the solar plexus. The inscription, Doyle!"

I did not quite understand what he was talking about; then I walked closer and saw - the wounds formed into words, and words into sentences.

'Amalgamation of revolt began,' it said. 'Fall.'

An uncontrollable and powerful shiver ran through my entire body, and involuntarily I half-staggered, half-stepped back. The Doctor caught my elbows in the same steely, painful grip.

"It's not very subtle," he said weakly, "is it?"

No, it wasn't subtle at all, and it was making me sick.

 

My heart was racing madly, filling every capillary of my body with ache and warmth. I thought it best to let myself slump against the wall rather than continue trying to walk; now I could see my own reflection in the mirror on the opposite. My cheeks were the colour of raspberry.

I heard an irritated voice saying "you must be insane, Doyle," and did not bother turning my head to verify that it was indeed the Doctor. Frankly, I was glad both of his presence and his irritation. The sudden turn for the worse had scared me, and I wouldn't have liked to be alone in such helpless and sorry state.

"I'm running a 102-degree fever," I growled. "If that qualifies as being insane."

"A hundred and two! I'd say it was about ninety-nine this morning. That's rather unfortunate, and alarming, too."

He was helping me to walk, and I felt his fingers ghost briefly against my forehead and my temples. It produced an echoing tickling sensation, a bit like touching a cobweb.

"On the upside," he shrugged slightly, "it shall pass soon. In my experience, the worse the crisis, the faster the recovery. If there is any recovery, that is."

"Thank you," I said with considerable vehemence. "That's a possibility I need to be aware of."

Carefully he let go of me, and I flopped down onto the bed, resting my forehead against the cool bedsheets. I had a momentary urge to curl up in a ball and refuse to acknowledge his presence, but even then, my mind hazy as it was, I knew it would be quite undignified.

"What are you planning to do about Miss Hunter and the murder?" asked I in a muffled voice.

"I regret to inform you," said the Doctor, "that lengthy conversations are absolutely out of the question. And besides, I'm not going anywhere until tomorrow. According to Miss Hunter, the next part of the... ritual is to take place on Wednesday, which means that we have about forty-eight hours at our disposal. For my purposes, this is plenty of time."

I nearly groaned in frustration at the deliberate vagueness of his phrasing, but really there was some truth in his words, and I did feel quite ill. What unsettled me the most was the fact that everything that happened in my mind now felt almost as real as the smell of lye soap and linen from the bedsheets and the sound of the Doctor's voice telling me something I couldn't quite make sense of. It seemed that, had I closed my eyes and my ears, there would have still been the odd shadows lurking in the corners and the loquacious whispers that made my skin crawl. I'd never been a coward, and yet that sensation was all but uncanny.

I opened my eyes wide, breathing heavily, and turned my head. At first I saw nothing but sultry darkness; then I made out the flat black eyes and the deformed, bared cheekbones. His eyebrows were burnt off, as was his hair; and what remained was ruins, but, horrifyingly enough, his features appeared to be as expressive as ever, and I could see traces of his beautiful sad smile on his molten lips.

Cold sweat was forming on my temples. Desperately I was trying to think of any way to distract him, to prevent him from learning that I wasn't asleep anymore; but my feverish mind was failing me. Without thinking I moved my hand a little - thankfully, it was under the blanket, and so unseen to him - closer to the revolver under my pillow.

He lifted one of his hands so that the soft light of the lamp was a glow on his white skin. His fingers seemed to be perfectly intact, untouched by the fire. It confused me for a moment: I remembered clearly how he had been all consumed in blazes, and there hadn't been a chance for any part of his body to escape the heat.

But in that moment my own fingers met the solid cold of the handle, and I ceased to doubt. Quickly I moved the blanket away and, though the chilly air burnt me and made me feel even more ill, I felt triumph at the realization that my estimations had proved right and that I was pointing the revolver at his heart; he would have no chance of either fleeing or attacking me now.

I did not think about whether I should kill him or try and call somebody. The only concern that stopped me from shooting him immediately was that I had not yet worked out how I'd dispose of the body and whether my alibi of being severely ill would be convincing enough for the local authorities. After a moment or so of such contemplation a brief thought occurred to me that, in truth, I hardly cared; I was prepared for the gallows, if such was be the cost of murdering him now. But then I thought of Innes, and of Louise, and how much disgrace such a death would bring upon them, and I was hesitating again, only too aware of how with every precious second slipping away my chances of succeeding were getting slimmer. Already I was quite dizzy; if I did not hurry, it might be that I would not get a chance to shoot him at all.

He had suddenly leant closer, and the next moment his fingers were encircling my wrists. I cocked the gun; but something prevented me from firing - a strange numbing suspicion that overtook me the instance he touched my skin. His hands were supposed to be bare, but they didn't feel warm. They felt like... leather, thin and cool leather, a comforting touch, and a gentle one, too. And neither was he trying to take the revolver away from me. Indeed it was still pointed at his heart.

"Surely," said the Doctor, "you're not about to shoot me, my dear Doyle. And what for? Even if some of my remarks could seem to you rather unfortunate, being verbally abused is not a good reason for a gentleman to kill somebody with a .455 Webley."

Understanding dawned upon me. I dropped the wretched thing and recoiled, shutting my eyes; blood was hammering in my temples, almost making the Doctor's words unintelligible.

"Hm, you must be delirious. That's too bad. Though I do hope that it is a consequence of fever rather than a sign of any more serious damage."

If only he had talked to me before! there was nothing more soothing and familiar to me then than his voice; and he was still holding one of my hands, which, shamefully, I did not protest against.

At the same time I felt how the fear and the excitement in my heart gave way to something colder.

I called his name.

"Don't worry," sighed he. "It could be worse."

The weight of the revolver disappeared from the bed, and I became aware that the Doctor had calmly returned it in its place.

"Take it," I uttered with a parched tongue. "For God's sake take it to yourself."

"O but I won't. It is an unsound idea to leave you unarmed when you're so weak; this is not to mention the fact that, strictly speaking, neither of us should ever be unarmed while in Crewe, no matter the circumstances."

I felt my mouth twisting into a resemblance of a rueful smile.

"An unsound idea - as opposed to the very sound initiative of providing a delirious man access to a revolver? And Bell, who would hurt me here?"

"You know very well that now is the time when improbable becomes the truth," said he dryly.

My heart was very heavy, but at the same time I couldn't help giving a short laugh of disbelief.

"By God, you're obsessed with him, too. I've never thought you could feel anything like this-" but then I had suddenly been overcome by such exhaustion and guilt that my cheerful tone had faltered. "I'm sorry, Doctor. Forgive me if you can; what I did was-"

"-understandable," he interrupted. "I'll have no more of this nonsense. And I must tell you, Doyle, that if I weren't, as you so charmingly referred to it, "obsessed with him", I would be either dead or retired. That's a cost one must pay."

I wanted to point out that he contradicted himself by trusting me with a firearm, but I discovered that I didn't have it in me to talk. Indeed there were no more worrisome thoughts disturbing my peace, and I was soon deeply and dreamlessly asleep.


	5. A Decoy Murder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to my reference file, there are five more chapters to go (not counting the illustration chapters).
> 
> Also, I am stupidly happy somebody even knows what the hell this fandom is. I was sure I'd be the only one reading this thing :D

The next time I remember, the piece of sky that could be seen from my window turned a sweet, sugary shade of pink. I was cold. It was a good sign; and I confess that the fact that the Doctor was already gone made me breathe with relief. I felt deucedly guilty over my ridiculous attempt at shooting him, though why I did not forget it the way people always forget dreams and other visions I didn't know; certainly I would've preferred to forget.

Where was he gone? That was another matter that troubled me; to inquire about the yester murder, I presumed, which was the reasonable thing to do. I was only afraid that it would lead him too close to Cream, or that he would attempt some drastic course of action with nobody but an unsuspecting police constable to back him up. That he had already convinced the Crewe bobbies of the importance of his work I had little doubt.

However, for the time being I could do nothing, and so I fetched myself some of the meat pie left from yesterday and settled on the bed with Bell's notebook he had so carelessly left on the desk, my blanket pulled over my head. I could not decide what was more whimsical - that I ate in bed, or that I read his notes without asking his permission - but I figured it did not matter as long as I could make use of that time of forced idleness. Some of Holmes's more eccentric habits, I admit, are derived from my own ways just as much as from those of the Doctor; and the nature of the case did make us inclined to disregard the conventionalities.

Despite myself, my thoughts turned to Violet Hunter. Had it been not for the case of the fainting lady, I would have imagined that the Rucastle family was trying to make her play somebody else's part, what with their insistence that she wear a particular dress and stand in a particular place. And of course it was natural to assume that the unfortunate old lady had been a witness to these events; but why would she have been so affected as to lose consciousness the next time she saw Miss Hunter? And what was behind the poetry recitations?

How, above all, had Mr. Rucastle known that she had stopped reciting? Unless, that is, she was mistaken in her estimation of the distance between them (I doubted that was the case).

She might have had nothing to do with Cream, but I was not heartless and I sympathized with her. I wished we could help her, truly I did - though there would hardly be such an opportunity, I mused, now that there was a true crime clearly committed by the one we were after.

I had ascertained earlier that my temperature was now close to ninety-nine, and that my state was otherwise satisfactory. It gave me hope that I would soon join Bell in his search of other clues, of something that we could cling to and get to Cream through. However, I was well aware that walking was still inadvisable; and, having read through the Doctor’s notes, I found myself facing the unpleasant prospect of wallowing in guilt, misery, and boredom mixed in equal proportions.  I knew it would do no good. For one, I might work myself up and snap at him when he came back; I’d hate myself for that.

At this point I had suddenly noticed a neat pile of books on the bedside table. I raised myself on my elbows to reach for it and took the upper one only for a piece of paper to come gliding onto my blanket. It was a note; one of the corners was transfixed with a pencil.

_Gone to warn Jonathan Smith's wife,_

_\- Bell_

_P.S. Sorry, this is all I had._

Truth to be told, at first this message had all but confused me. Upon some reflection I figured that Jonathan Smith must have been the name of the murder victim from yesterday, but why his wife needed to be warned was unclear.

The post scriptum sounded no less cryptic, though I quickly realized that he was referring to the books. I shot a look at them; it was the collected works of James Syme. An excellent surgeon, I thought, and a decent writer, too, but not exactly the kind of reading recommended for the sick.

 

Fortunately, it was not long before the Doctor returned.

"Good morning," said he cheerfully, reaching my side in three broad steps and bending down to take me by the wrist. I sighed and rested the back of one of Syme's magna opera against the bridge of my nose.

"Not too bad," announced Bell, "you'll be right as rain tomorrow, laddie."

There was no hint of resentment in his tone; indeed he seemed to have quite forgotten that I had nearly murdered him. Dimly I remembered him telling me not to worry about it – that must’ve been it, although why all of a sudden he behaved so selflessly I had no idea. Did he know what I had seen?

"Whatever did you go to Mrs. Jonathan Smith for? Is she of any concern to Cream?"

"She was of every concern," he responded, and shook his head reassuringly upon seeing me flinch. "No, no, Doyle, I'm satisfied to say that she's alive and well, and so is everyone else. But she has narrowly avoided being killed, thanks to the lucky coincidence by which I happened to be there."

I rolled over onto my stomach and stared at him, frowning.

"Tell me," demanded I.

Clearly he was still excited by the incident and whatever thoughts he had in regard to it, because he was positively unable to sit still. After some moments of tossing _Excision of the_ _Scapula_ from one hand to the other he had finally sprang to his feet and darted towards the window.

"There was something very odd about Jonathan Smith's murder," he began. "It would be only natural to assume that he did a bad turn to Cream's plans, but alas. I asked around some: forty, an experienced sailor, member of the crew of a certain Santa Lucia, in Crewe on a private business of a rather hazy nature - I assumed illegal opium trade. Stayed with his wife, a Mrs. Alicia Smith."

He turned to me, his eyes alight with agitation.

"As soon as I learnt that there was a woman in the equation, I imagined she was the one targeted. As Smith seemed to have nothing to do with any of Cream's schemes and indeed with anything of interest at all, his wife was the most likely offender. Besides, you'll remember that Neill has a predilection for murdering the fairer sex and held no interest in killing men before, save for the cases when he sought revenge-"

I remembered it all too well, but I refrained from telling him that. Undoubtedly he was aware of the fact, insensitive though his treatment of it might be.

"It troubled me, Doyle. I knew that, if I was correct, ultimately he'd want to kill her. So I decided to lose no time and visit her immediately; and I hurried to her house - it is near the Crewe hall. She welcomed me inside and asked what the matter was.

"Now, hers is a small two-story house that stands some twenty feet away from the nearby country road. While I was trying to tell the poor woman as tactfully as possible that she ran a risk of becoming the next victim of the very killer who put the life of her husband to an end, I noticed a man who was walking down the road very swiftly. He was dressed in all black, and I could not make out his face against the sunlit sky; he was coming closer with every moment, paying no attention to the house on his left."

"It would be customary for any walker to contemplate such a big and solitary object at least briefly, but this one was of a different kind. He peered ahead of him, his gaze fixed, as though there were no house at all - I was instantly alarmed. And he was the right height, too, and had the right kind of gait."

The Doctor shrugged, intertwining his fingers in an impatient gesture of someone drawing an obvious conclusion from two premises.

"So, when he was the closest to the house he could get, he took out a gun and fired. I pushed Mrs. Smith aside, saving her from the bullet, and tried shooting him; but the few precious moments I spent on his not-to-be victim were the moments that allowed him to escape. There was a great expanse of frozen heather on the opposite side of the road, a whole field ending in a forest. He must have sneaked through this field and hidden amongst the first trees. Chasing him there would've been, of course, both pointless and dangerous."

I was listening to this extraordinary account, forgetting to breathe.

"But!" Bell exclaimed suddenly, and raised his index finger as though to hush me, "I think I have shot him in the leg."

At these words over his face there spread a smile of such joyful, pure delight that I had to suppress a shiver. I had never seen him like this before - happy over inflicting an injury on a living human being - and it was to my disconcert that I realized that I was smiling back in a fit of unrestrained admiration.

The Doctor changed countenance a little; but, though there was no more joy, his lips were still twitching in a wry and eerie reflection of that smile, like the last tongues of a dying fire.

"We'll burn in Hell, Doyle," he said with feeling, and stepped towards me. I felt my heart clench.

"But so shall he."

 

Momentarily he looked away, straightening with hurried quickness. His breathing was uneven.

"You know," he began in a low voice, as if afraid that somebody else might be listening, "there's this... Alicia Smith... she has nothing to do with any of Cream's schemes, either."

"How can you be sure? How, for that matter, did you ascertain that Jonathan Smith had nothing to do with Cream?"

It still felt odd to mention his name so often. I had quite forgotten what it was like on one's tongue, that sweet and vile name.

Bell shook his head.

"But I talked to her. I am sure at least that she has no idea that any such person exists. And, miraculously save himself though he might be able to, Cream could not have avoided being severely burnt... she'd know whom I was talking about."

This argumentation sounded to me unconvincing at best.

"What if she was unwilling to cooperate? What if-"

"I know," he said quickly, "and you're right, you're right that treating the Smith case inattentively would be criminal negligence. I've no intention of leaving it."

For a moment or two he drummed the windowsill with his fingers, painful uncertainty in his expression.

"It is just that, this Rucastle, he bothers me. Violet Hunter is clever, but she's too eager for her own sake. Something terrible may happen if I do not interfere. Perhaps we could-"

"I'll permit no such thing," I said firmly. "No, I already made that mistake once. And I judge from your words that you are not telling me the whole truth, which I should say is quite indecent of you, Bell."

The Doctor's face fell visibly.

"I shall tell you, I promise! I can’t tell you now as you understand; for I cannot confirm it, and it is imperative that you see all that I saw and consider it impartially, if you wish to be of help. I do admit that you have a point; certainly I shall dedicate this day to inquiries about Jonathan Smith. But abandoning Miss Hunter is out of the question."

"You can tell her to leave Crewe," said I, relenting at the sight of his distress - though I couldn't fathom what it was that worried him so. "She'll listen to you."

"I can't," he responded, and returned to my side with a slow step. "You see, I do highly suspect that-"

But he stopped mid-sentence, jerking his head up. I could hear it, too - the two impatient knocks.

"I fear this may be news from Miss Hunter,” he said quietly. “Stay in bed, Doyle.”

 

He returned to me some fifteen minutes later, and I saw with unease that he was grimness itself.

"I knew," he told me. "I knew something like this would happen, but I never imagined it to be quite as serious. There's no talk of leaving her now.”

“What is it, Doctor?”

Wordlessly he gave me the telegram.

ALICE RUCASTLE HAD THE SAME KIND OF HAIR [it read] STOP BOTH PLAITS VANISHED STOP VIOLET HUNTER

That she had chosen to wire us was evidence enough of her alarm; and I could understand, to some extent, why she would have been alarmed. If I was correct in supposing that she was a decoy of sorts, there was little doubt that the person she was to substitute for was the late Alice Rucastle. What I positively couldn’t grasp, however, was how it made the already existing situation worse and why Bell looked so troubled.

“I’ll explain,” the Doctor said, apparently afraid that I’d start arguing again, “But there’s little time for it now. I'll make what I can of the Smith affair - no, do not object, I assure you I'll be perfectly safe - and tomorrow, hopefully, you'll be able to accompany me to the Copper Beeches. It is close to the Crewe Hall, too, some way into the countryside.”

I did not like the idea, but I saw clearly that facts were on his side. And, after all, I could not let my fears get in the way of the investigation. Bell had always excelled at separating his personal life from the cases; I supposed it was time I learnt to follow his example.

"Only if you promise that you won't do anything stupidly altruistic," I said.

"Honour bright," responded the Doctor, attempting a smile. "I'll just see if I can connect Smith to Cream."

I nodded, sighed despondently and buried my face in the pillow. There were two or three hours more to go; and, frankly, I was fed up with sleeping. The only reason I adhered to the Doctor's instructions at all was because he told me I could accompany him the next day. A visit to the mysterious estate of the Copper Beeches would probably make up for the bone-shattering boredom.

And then I still had two volumes worth of Syme's works, which, given my situation, was a blessing. I supposed the melancholy inspired by the way the azure skies above Crewe had begun to turn white with fog and snow should have no power over me as long as I could amuse myself with Dr. Syme's thoughts on the exciting process that was cutting people's limbs off.

 

I should've known better than to sleep, I suppose, but the Doctor was gone for more than five hours and I couldn't bear staring at the darkening landscape outside. The shadows gathering between the snowdrifts made me feel cold.

I should've known better than to sleep, because truly that beach was the only thing I could expect to see. For the briefest of moments, after Louise's death, it had slipped from my consciousness; I was preoccupied with Cream's reappearance and allowed myself to forget.

 

Great foamy waves were splashing against the rock, just the way it was that day, and the wind was fluttering the blue clouds. I saw Cream's figure in the distance, and I realized with cold, angry delight that he was much farther than we were and would never get to Elsbeth on time. I knew he saw us, too, and likely arrived at the same conclusion; now he was standing still, his curls tousled by the wild blasts.

"Doctor," I called quietly without turning. Back then, I'd have never called him by name. "What are we to do?"

Bell was silent. I knew he was there, somehow. Dreams often don't make much sense.

Neill turned and started walking away from us, his step as full of spring as ever. It seemed to me that he had thrown his head back a little, as though to give a short melodious laugh.

"Doctor?"

It was cold, too, and I saw that the sea had sneaked up to my feet and was licking the toes of my shoes. It made me suspicious, for I remembered quite clearly that the last time I looked the surf line was nowhere near us.

Then a distant cry had alerted me to somebody's presence, and I jerked my head up only to see Elsbeth waving at me wildly, standing on her toes to reach higher, quite unsuspecting and joyous of our appearance. I walked towards her with quickness, feeling a smile of delight part my lips; she ran - I never knew she could run so fast - and took me firmly by the arms, apparently unwilling to hug me in the Doctor's presence.

I turned to look at him. He walked towards us some way but was still about twenty feet behind; upon catching my gaze he nodded and tipped his hat.

"There's nothing to be done," I guessed rather than heard him saying. The wind was now positively wild; Elsbeth's cheeks grew pink from the cold, and I could feel the drops of sea water on my skin and my lips.

"There's nothing to be done," repeated the Doctor, lowering his head so that I wouldn't be able to see his expression. "But I'll get him."

I nodded back, satisfied. Hesitantly he made a couple of steps forward.

"Doyle. Miss Scott."

With that he turned away, leaning on his silver-topped cane, and started to walk. We followed him with our eyes. Gradually he turned into a mere silhouette, a tall figure against the troubled sky.

"What shall become of that... case?" asked she dreamily, holding onto me tight. I was playing with her beautiful ginger hair, biting my lips so as to hold the tears back.

"I don't care," I said. "You are alive, and I couldn't care less about the damn case. What shall become of Cream, Bell, and the rest of the world is none of my concern."

The rest was water. Shining, light water, like one giant flowing mirror, was spreading around us, cutting the Doctor's figure away, filling the air with angelic glow. We were alone amidst the water.

"Doyle," called somebody's voice, and I opened my eyes.

 

It was dark. The room was full of this harsh wintry darkness that is so unwelcome to everyone who wakes up before eight o'clock.

"Bell," I acknowledged tremulously, "it is you, isn't it?"

"So it is."

He was sitting on the opposite side of my bed, his elbows leant against his knees and his hands cupping his face.

"I am sorry for waking you up, but I thought you might like to listen to what I have to say about both the murder and the case of Violet Hunter."

"It is nothing," I said, carefully slowing my breathing down. "You were quite right to do so."

The Doctor gave me a long suspicious look. It was likely that he had guessed, or even knew for certain, what I was dreaming about, and it felt wrong; I cursed my inability to hide my reactions from him.

"Go ahead, then."

"Crewe Arms was the last place where Jonathan Smith was seen by somebody who can recognize him," he said at length. "There he was approached by a man whose face was covered with a black scarf and a mask. Smith demanded that he introduce himself, and the man said that his name was Patrick Baumann and that he had come to Smith in connection with some confidential business. The rest of the conversation was not heard by the witnesses."

"Five minutes later, they were seen walking out of Crewe Arms towards Henry Street, and that was the last time anybody saw Jonathan Smith alive. The cries of the chance passer-by who discovered his body attracted the attention of Constable Lovel at approximately eleven o'clock in the morning."

"When did Smith meet with that 'Baumann'?" asked I. The Doctor gave a dry chortle.

"That's the curious part, Doyle. It happened at ten o'clock the same day."

"He approached Smith with an intention to murder him," mused I. "And at ten... as if he were planning for us to see the body."

"Well, I imagine even he did not hope for such dramatic an effect. Certainly the murder itself was a message to us, but he in all probability counted on the local press to savour the gruesome details; that we happened to stumble across the scene of the crime was his luck rather than his wit."

If he hoped to reassure me, the attempt was a failure: frankly, I didn't care as to why Cream was successful in his crimes - I was only desperate to put an end to them, no matter the cost.

The Doctor must've divined my silent objection, because he paused, sighed and tucked the edge of the blanket under my shoulder.

"I agree," he said. "Though I was merely stating a fact. But that is not all; let me continue, for tomorrow we'll have little time for discussions of this sort."

"The words on Smith's chest were carved with a knife. Could be Cream's, yes - although of course I can hardly say that with certainty. Other than that, there's nothing of value on his body. I examined his fingers and ascertained that he was indeed an opium smoker; but, judging from what I've seen of his household and his wife, a casual one."

"I have also talked to Alicia Smith's servants. They've never seen anyone matching the description either in the house or in close proximity; despite the fact that Mrs Smith has a habit of going out for a walk each morning and knows many a folk in the town, nobody has ever encountered her in the company of anyone other than her husband."

There he stopped, contemplating me, and rose to come back a moment later with a candle burning in his hand. Great trembling shadows fell onto the floor and the bed, making the darkness look strangely alive, breathing, looking. The Doctor placed the candle on the bedside table, and immediately the shadows stilled; the illusion was gone.

"I won't ask you what you make of that, laddie," said he.

"How very kind of you. Please continue."

"That was the general idea," was Bell's retort. "In short, I think that, non-ultimate though the arguments might be, the Smith murder is Cream's attempt to distract us."

I was instantly suspicious, because I thought I knew what he was driving at.

"Distract from what?"

"From the case of Violet Hunter, of course," said he serenely. It was exactly what I expected, and I winced.

"Nonsense, Bell. What interest could Cream possibly hold in Miss Hunter?"

"I see you are sceptical," responded the Doctor. That was a bit of an understatement, but I informed him that he had grasped the essence. "I'll show you tomorrow, Doyle. You're hardly capable of logical thinking right now; it is better if you rest. I told you that I'd talk about Violet Hunter, too, but I think now that it would be more convenient to explain this to you later on. My hypothesis regarding this case is highly specific, and I wouldn't like to bias you by letting you accept it. Perhaps it is for the best that you consider the murder of Jonathan Smith infinitely more important; such diversity of opinions can only be helpful to our cause."

With these words he stood up sharply and took the candle, waving it a little as if in a salute to me. Out of some considerations the nature of which I couldn’t comprehend he was trying to cheer me up; he was not very successful, and I am afraid that only for his sake did I wish it was not so, but I appreciated the thought.

"Good night, Bell," I said with more softness than I intended to.


	6. Smoke and Mirrors

There was little snow in the fields. Instead, a thin layer of brilliant frost covered the withered grass, fading the fulvous colour into grey. Somewhere deep in the icy fog a lonely robin was singing with admirable endeavour; in that solitude and peacefulness it was hard to imagine the busy townsfolk of Crewe hurrying down the dark streets, oblivious to the peril we had unwittingly brought unto them.

And so if I did not oppose the Doctor when he suggested that we break into the Rucastles' house the following night, it was because I did not for one moment take the idea seriously.

"That does not sound like a good plan," I objected, and suppressed a yawn. "And both I and Miss Hunter here are still in the dark as to the reasons for your interest in the affair, Bell."

"I am aware it may appear ill considered. But you'll see that I'm being nothing but reasonable," said he, waving his cane at the house whose outline had just appeared on the horizon.

Miss Hunter increased her pace to catch up with us. Her step was short, very precise and perhaps a little stiff, like a series of quick stitches, and so at first she had trouble adjusting to the Doctor's stride - his limp notwithstanding, he rarely opted for being slow if it was at all possible to be fast.

"I could do this on my own, Dr. Bell," she said at once. "Surely that would be much less risky an undertaking than for you to come with me."

For a moment he seemed to consider her words; he contemplated her before finally biting his lower lip and shaking his head.

"I've no doubt you could, my dear Miss Hunter. But it is not a risk I am willing to take. If my assumptions regarding the curious events you've been a witness to are any degree of correct, there are human lives at stake, and more than one, too. I would much prefer it if you, at least, were out of danger."

She nodded and said no more, only smiling at us with a slightly humorous air as though to say that her obedience was a gesture of courtesy towards the Doctor. I knew then what he meant by saying that she was "too eager for her own sake": if the Rucastles had indeed hired her with a malevolent purpose in mind, then of all the available options they contrived to choose the worst. For herself she seemed to fear not at all. But to this laudable quality there was, I thought now, much unjustified carelessness.

As for my state, it had, in perfect accordance with Bell's prognosis, much improved. Whether he had generously refrained from gloating at the fact or was simply too preoccupied with the case to remember I did not know; but the end result was the same - the one time he brought the topic up it was merely to ask if I thought I'd be fit to visit an American relative of the Rucastles who, according to Miss Hunter, came to stay in Crewe some two and a half months ago. Naturally I answered in the affirmative, feeling no small amount of gratitude for his leniency, and this seemed to have satisfied him; he turned his attention away once again.

Now I could make out the trees behind the fencing - it was indeed a group of thick, tall copper beeches, their branches motionless in the steaming air. While the upper parts of their crowns were bare, almost all the leaves on the lower branches remained intact, spreading just above the ground in strange brazen wings. Sure enough the whole picture was quite phantasmagoric, especially now that the snow had thinned and human footprints were no longer discernible. Save for the path meandering towards the main entrance, the estate looked as uninhabited as if it were deserted years ago.

"Heather is in London with her grandparents," said Miss Hunter, fiddling with the heavy keys. Finally the gates gave way, and we stepped onto the premises; Bell, however, went no farther, contemplating the house with a thoughtful air. It seemed to me that he was looking for something he knew must've been there.

I studied the building. Two wings of perfectly dull Regency architecture were joined by a tower-like central hall with a flat roof. Even though the walls were mostly painted a sweet beige, there was no helping the overall sense of coldness and abandon; and rough stone was showing through here and there, making the lack of care all the more obvious.

"This may sound strange, Miss Hunter," said the Doctor finally, "but do you know anything about the history of the Copper Beeches? Did anything happen to the building in the last, say, two years before your arrival - any accidents?"

"I do not think so," she answered. "At this point, there are no rooms in the house I have not seen, and all of them seem to be in a decent condition."

He sighed with some disappointment, reluctantly averting his gaze.

"So it would appear," he muttered, "so it would appear. Perhaps there was something else, somewhere on the grounds?"

Miss Hunter shot me a brief puzzled look. I could only smile and shrug - whatever it was that the Doctor had in mind, he certainly never told me, and collapsing ceilings had had no part in my own view of the case.

"Not that I can think of," said she. "Not counting the drying of the well, that is."

She walked three steps down the path and pointed at the dark shape in the shadow cast by the beeches.

"And it happened before your time, didn't it," said the Doctor slowly, following her. Miss Hunter nodded; there still was a silent question in her eyes, but seemingly he took no notice.

We were now off the path and under the first tree branches. Two thick, smooth planks were joined in a cross on top of the well, which was otherwise quite inconspicuous.

"Mr. Rucastle told me that it had dried out two months ago, and so he boarded it up, lest somebody should approach it carelessly and stumble."

"Heather, I presume," Bell said. "No one else would bother, what with it being so far away from the main path."

He was still studying it, his head tilted to the side. Then he raised his cane and carefully tapped at the surface of the lid in-between the planks. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that something fell onto the small strip of unmolten snow close to my feet, and I picked it up automatically only to find myself holding a dry thistle flower tied with black satin.

With some confusion I examined it. Now that the Doctor turned his attention to me, I could see that he, too, had been expecting something else, because he looked equally nonplussed; then a sort of shadow passed over his face.

"I seem to have been correct," said he. "Though I rather hoped for the opposite."

"Correct in regard to what?" asked I, lifting my gaze from the thistle.

"The well never dried out, that much I understood from the sound. But the flower... the flower must've been left by somebody. It happened quite a while ago. Miss Hunter, when did Alice Rucastle die?"

"Why, two months ago. In the end of October." She paled. I was admittedly taken aback and a little awed by the apparent fortuitousness of his guess, although I trust I made no comment to this effect. "Am I to take it, Dr. Bell, that you believe there was more to her death than nervous exhaustion?"

"I am afraid, Miss Hunter," he said, "that this is exactly what I had in mind."

"But why would my employers attempt to conceal the true cause of death? You do not mean to implicate them, surely!"

"That I do not know," replied the Doctor, contemplating the beeches. "And nor, I fear, can I reassure you in any way. Really I ought to ask you to leave at once; and of course it is your right to do so now. I will only tell you, Miss Hunter, that by staying you would provide us with a unique opportunity to bring to justice a person who is of considerable danger to everyone around and, ultimately, to the social climate of the country."

"I shall stay, then," cried she, throwing her pretty head back. Ah! she looked like Nike the goddess of victory, a blush on her high cheekbonees and a halo of early sunbeams intertwining with her hair; though I detested the Doctor's blackmail rhetoric, I could not help but admire her extraordinary courage and the strength of her character.

Apparently the Doctor himself did not hope for such an enthusiastic response, because he stared at her with some surprise.

"It is great selflessness on your part, Miss Hunter, to agree to this. Please be assured that you can still change your mind whenever you want; and remember that you should always give your personal safety priority over any stage of our investigation, no matter the importance of it."

For the merest fraction of second she seemed to weigh that demand, then accept it.

"I'll bear that in mind."

At that moment he produced a matchbox (I swallowed a questioning _but you don't smoke_ ), struck a match and took the thistle from my open palm. The fluffy inflorescence of faint purple kindled at once, and for a moment or two the flower was burning like a candle, its stem intact; then the hard dry fibres finally blushed. Bell looked as it was reduced to ashes in his fingers, seemingly oblivious to the pain the heat must've caused him. When the last spark was put out by the wind, he lowered his head and blew the fine grey powder away, following it with his eyes as it flew and vanished, leaving no trace behind.

"Better not to take any risks," he explained. "We wouldn't want to put Heather - and I've little doubt it's hers - in jeopardy. Now, may we see the part of the grove you were talking about?"

"Certainly," responded Miss Hunter, and walked along the path only to turn left, away from the house. "Follow me, gentlemen."

After some three hundred feet of alley we entered the alder grove known to me and the Doctor from Miss Hunter's peculiar account. In summer, it must've been an exceptionally damp place - what with it being located under a steep slope leading to a river - but now we were walking down a broad, flat path solidified with cold. There was hardly any vegetation apart from the alders, although in places the space between the trees was overgrown with honeysuckle; I noticed that it obscured the view of anyone standing on the path, effectively preventing him from seeing farther than ten feet into the grove.

"It is here," said Miss Hunter, pointing at a small clearing between two especially big bushes. "Heather likes making snow figures, so she's generally quiet during these poetry performances; she neither disturbs me nor tries to run away."

"Well, it is only fifteen minutes, after all," remarked I, but she laughed: "You know how it is with children, Doctor. For some of them fifteen minutes are nought, true; but they're rare birds. Most of my charges would become insufferable the moment they are left alone."

Through the whole exchange the Doctor was staring at one of the honeysuckles, paying little mind to our presence. When he finally spoke, addressing, apparently, Miss Hunter, it was without turning to her; he seemed unusually preoccupied with some worrisome thought.

"What... what is she like?" he asked slowly.

Miss Hunter turned her attention to him and contemplated the back of his head with some disconcert.

"Are you speaking of Heather?"

"Yes, yes," the Doctor said, impatience in his voice. "And are you by any chance aware of the identity of her father?"

"No," she replied, blinking, "the Rucastles rarely talk about the matter as you understand. I've always thought Alice had a husband whom she had married shortly before her death. Perhaps she became pregnant with the child before the marriage; I imagine anyone would be reluctant to discuss it now."

"As to my little charge, she is a sweet girl, though-" there Miss Hunter stopped for a moment, and I noticed that there was something hazy about the look she gave Bell, "strange you should ask. She may sometimes appear odd, yes. Not quite there."

"And you told me that Mrs. Rucastle is a former actress," said he, changing the topic with abruptness. He was still looking away from us.

"She's quite proud of the fact," responded Miss Hunter. "Though I can't see what connection it bears to Heather."

"To Heather, none," said the Doctor, raising his cane as he stepped forward. With great care he separated the fragile honeysuckle branches; I stared at him, then at the bush. At first I saw little but shadows. Then a glimpse of something silvery had caught my eye, and I walked towards it to make sure that it was indeed a reflection on some object other than the Doctor's cane; much to my astonishment, I could now make out a faint outline of something big and flat. It was, as I understood a moment later, a full-length floor mirror with its frame removed.

"I thought as much. But what a bizarre, bizarre way of conducting the affair! I fear I do not like the possible implications at all."

I informed him that I had no idea what he was talking about and that I'd greatly appreciate it if he stopped speaking in riddles. Miss Hunter seemed to be confused, as well; nevertheless it was evident that the dryness with which I addressed the Doctor troubled her. I thought she'd learn yet that sometimes it was imperative that one address him emotionally if he was to consider answering at all.

"It is not just the mirror," he responded, promptly confirming my hypothesis. "It is a system of mirrors. You know the simplest kind - two mirrors facing each other, or two mirrors joined at one edge at a particular angle. These are all middle-school physics. But there are more complex systems that allow to achieve more impressive results - distorting the image in all manners, or translating it so that from the point of view of the observer it appears to be in a different place entirely."

He said "translating", and it was like a ray of light that flickered, showing to me for a moment the case in its entirety. I realized what role was given to Violet Hunter, and by whom; and what it was that the Doctor had hoped to find in the Copper Beeches.

"Miss Hunter is indeed being passed off as the late Miss Rucastle," blurted I. "But it is not just an image in the distance. She has a voice, and is able to converse with this person - not without the help of Mrs. Rucastle; I imagine her acting skills came in handy when the whole affair started."

The Doctor was about to answer something, and Miss Hunter herself obviously had questions, but then another problem occurred to me; I turned to Bell in some unease.

"But why does this person not walk closer to the alleged Alice? Surely it would be only natural to wish to be near her while talking."

"Your conclusion is absolutely to the point, Doyle," said the Doctor. "As is your question. Indeed it is one of the reasons for my suspicion that instead of being forced to impersonate Alice Rucastle herself Miss Hunter has involuntarily played the role of the late Miss Rucastle's ghost."

We both stared at him.

“A ghost, is it,” drawled I, narrowing my eyes.

"If you'll excuse us for a moment, Miss Hunter," he sighed, and proceeded to turn about him with a look of concentration. I saw his fingers trace invisible lines in the air - the way one would write on a blackboard, only in three dimensions rather than two, and without any ruler; these manipulations finally had him facing southwest, not quite towards the river, but obviously away from the clearance. He ushered me forth and walked, careful to disturb neither the honeysuckle nor the trees. It was clear that he didn't wish for the Rucastles to know that anyone'd visited the place, and therefore I followed his example.  
  
The second mirror was tilted to the side a little so that no amount of light from the sky could reveal it to a person standing in front of the one we saw. But I was positive that the Rucastles were playing a dangerous game, for, had Miss Hunter moved enough to notice the reflection, she would've undoubtedly known that something was amiss. As it is, it helped that the first two mirrors were concealed in the shadow of the alders, and that the landscape was so monotonous as to allow its reflections to mix without making the mirrors conspicuous.  
  
The third, fourth, and fifth mirrors were all placed very closely together, somewhat concealed by the bushes, but the next one was nowhere in sight; and I turned around only to see a human figure, distinct against the blackness of yet another clearance that seemed to lead into the grove like a corridor of sorts. The Doctor stood next to it, slightly to the left. The illusion was indeed quite startling; I nearly had to prevent myself from tipping my hat to the alleged Alice Rucastle.  
  
Though there was hardly anything truly eerie in the sight, an air of aloofness and solitude given to the reflection by the surrounding darkness and the tangle of tree branches impressed me deeply. The colour of her hair, above all, was clearly discernible (or at least the outline of merry gold on its edges).  
  
"This is our spectre," said the Doctor when I came closer. "But let's go back to Miss Hunter; I owe you both an explanation."  
  
I nodded, but lingered some before turning around, studying the river whose waters ran quietly in the hollow. The air wasn't cold enough for it to be covered with ice, and yet there were thin transparent slips all the way along the shores, though eaten considerably by the stream. They were sharp - the longer I looked, the sharper and thinner they seemed; the more bottomless the gloom below the surface became. Hastily I turned aside.  
  
I found it peculiar that, assuming that Alice Rucastle had indeed been murdered, her killer chose the well on the very grounds of the estate when there was a river running not half a mile away.

 

“It wasn’t my idea, Doyle. I told you the case was bizarre – thanks either to our mutual friend or to Mr. Rucastle himself. But the style is distinctive, you cannot deny that... See, I’ve suspected the existence of the mirror system from the very moment Miss Hunter came to us for the first time; it was the only explanation for how quickly the Rucastles reacted when she disobeyed their instructions. But I’ve never believed that it was to impersonate the living Alice. What was the probability, after all, that somebody who was close to the family would be unaware of her death? A spectre, then."

"Of course the procedure was very elaborate and could hardly be used for any truly good purpose, but for the time being I decided that Doyle here was right in giving priority to the other case of ours, especially since it already involved a murder. It was only upon receiving your telegram, Miss Hunter, that I realized that the whole affair was acquiring a sinister undertone. The vanished plaits suggested a spiritistic ritual of some sort, possibly one that required following a set of instructions, and I was not willing to wait in order to find out what the eventual result was supposed to be. It could be nought, but I was alarmed; the scheme sounded too familiar."

"Thereafter another difficulty arose. What good could the manipulations bring to the Rucastles? And, if they both were aware of the essence of the process, who was the third party the show was staged for?”

“The fainting lady,” cried I. “Alias the American relative!”

“The very same,” said the Doctor. “Close to the family; knew Alice, but not for too long; likely superstitious. And of course there was some kind of blackmail; I thought two motives possible – money, or death of Miss Rucastle. From what evidence we have, it appears to be the latter.”

Miss Hunter clasped her small hands in velvet blue gloves together, emotion clear in her eyes.

“Surely we ought to help the unfortunate woman,” she said.

"So we shall," agreed the Doctor. "That is why I need to see if there is anything of value in the house, and why I do not wish to do it while your employers are away. Money can still play a part in the affair; and I do suspect that the description of the ritual exists on paper. And if I were Mr. Rucastle, I would have never left it in the same building with an energetic nosy stranger – no offence to you, Miss Hunter."

"None taken," said she, and beamed at us.

 

"I won't claim that it is the most dangerous mission we've ever embarked upon," I whispered, "but it has to be one of the most ridiculous ones. Why, we are about to break into someone's house in the middle of the night, masked, like a bunch of common burglars. And our accomplice is a lady!"

After the soft blue glow of the moonlit snow my eyes did not at once adapt to the sheer darkness that reigned in the main hall. It was quiet, and there was a cold scent of dust in the air; our steps were barely audible, thanks to the excellent quality of the floor boarding.

I saw the Doctor's lips under the edge of the mask curve in an involuntary smile.

"We are far more likely to be killed if caught," he answered. "Or at least they'll try to kill us, in which case we have every moral right to open reciprocal fire and flee. You see, Doyle, not everything is as bad as it seems. Now pray be quiet; for really this affair is no joke."

That I knew very well. If the Rucastles were to opt for calling the police, we would be facing the charge of armed burglary and a prospect of spending more years in prison than I would care to count.

As noiselessly as we could, we walked upstairs and found ourselves in a long narrow corridor. I followed the Doctor, and I could just hear the catlike Miss Hunter behind my back - wisely she chose to wear nothing but a pair of stockings on her feet.

Miss Hunter silently reached for my shoulder and, when I turned to face her, nodded at Bell. I, in turn, touched his wrist to attract his attention; he looked back, raising his hand in a gesture of acknowledgment upon seeing Miss Hunter point at one of the doors on our right.

Then he turned to the door and produced a piece of wire. Without a word I stepped forward, turning the lantern up and holding it above his head. Faint smell of oil and metal tickled my nostrils. Some three minutes and much fiddling later our party stepped inside what appeared to be another, broader corridor, bending at some angle with respect to the main one; in the same manner we passed another door and were finally in a small scantily lit room that appeared to serve as an antechamber of sorts to the two rooms on the sides. There Miss Hunter grabbed the Doctor by a sleeve and nodded at the left one.

The Doctor turned to me and signalled that I switch the lantern off. I raised an eyebrow, but he nodded empathically, widening his eyes, and I dared not disobey. Now we were left in perfect darkness but for the weak even light from the snow and the stars that came through the big window in front of us; I could neither see nor hear Miss Hunter, which was, I suppose, a compliment to her burgling skills, questionable as it sounds.

Much to my astonishment, after five minutes or so the door to Rucastle's room slid open. The Doctor drew himself up, tall and thin against the faint silver of a floor mirror that could be seen behind his back, and gestured soothingly before tiptoeing into the room. I heard a faint hitch in Miss Hunter's even breath, and my own heart increased its pace; we observed as Bell walked nearer Rucastle's bed and its unsuspecting occupant. Then he bent down, lifted something from the floor and walked back in the same manner, making an odd dancing gesture to avoid stepping on one of the battens that for God knows what reasons seemed to him suspicious.

For a while we walked in perfect silence, back through the familiar rooms and corridors. Finally, we were in the gallery above the main hall; there he handed the suitcase - and it was indeed a suitcase as I could see now - to me.

"Doyle," he whispered. "It is absolutely, I repeat, absolutely vital that you follow my instructions. Miss Hunter?"

"Dr. Bell?"

"Do you happen to have a pen and a piece of paper anywhere near?"

"Why, yes," she replied, surprise in her voice. "But what-"

"You can help us, too."

"I'm listening."

"Good. Take the suitcase to Miss Hunter's room. Open it. Search it for any documents that seem to you of faintest importance - not means of identification, of course, but something else - and copy them. There shan't be many - two papers, perhaps, or even one. If copying should seem to take more than three minutes, memorize as much as you can."

"Memorize? Bell, it is surely-"

"There isn't much text," he repeated. "You'll manage. Come on, I believe in you, Doyle. Did you never learn pages from your anatomy textbook by heart the night before the lecture?"

"I know some stenography," whispered Miss Hunter.

"Ah, that's good. See? You two shall manage it fine."

"And you?"

"I have another matter to take care of," said he, and, not listening further to my questions, turned away and walked back into the right wing of the house. I had nothing left to do but follow his instructions, odd as they were.

We had finished the assignment given to us by the Doctor satisfactorily; some parts of what we found were copied by Miss Hunter, others I committed to memory in the process of reading. Truly it is astonishing how much text a man can memorize when he is in another man's house midway through an apparent larceny. Bell had returned to us a while later. He absolutely insisted on packing Mr. Rucastle's suitcase the way it was and carrying it back to the man's room, where he produced his impromptu skeleton key only to close the door as though it were never opened in the first place. I could but envy his skill in lock picking - and wonder, incidentally, as to how he could acquire it without breaking into people's houses on a regular basis. The thought that he had spent the years between Edith's death and the appearance of one overly curious Arthur Doyle in the University of Edinburgh doing just that was too much even for my imagination.

We walked away from the house, having left Miss Hunter in her room. The falling snow had reassured us that our footsteps would be gone by tomorrow; I felt unusually, and inappropriately, light-hearted, my mind empty with relief. The sky before us had just turned black - clouds were covering the Cynosure with the sheer brightness of its North Star.

"Good man, Doyle," said the Doctor. "That went down superbly."

"We all did well," I agreed. "But what a singular document, that last one you mentioned! The mirror system must be a part of a devilishly strange imitation of the process."

"So I think."

"What was it that you did, however?"

He dragged his mask off; I saw tiredness in his eyes, but some satisfaction, too.

"Rucastle's financial documents," he said, and I choked on my own words. "Receipts and the like. What, did you think that I could remember the stains on somebody's pillow, or the pattern of mud on somebody's shoes, but fail at memorizing a bunch of names and numbers? They aren't that different. Just ink on paper."

"He did, as it happens, owe quite a sum to a certain Patrick Baumann."


	7. Anticipation

I found him in an armchair in the main room. He wasn't exactly asleep, but, despite being in a relatively vertical position, not fully awake, either; and he looked like a man fairly drained of energy. His pose, for one, suggested a futile attempt to find a compromise between curling up to doze and not giving the observer an impression that he was too stubborn to go to bed. Though I tried to be noiseless, he heard me enter and turned his head a little, blinking. I made a vague soothing gesture, in response to which he shut his eyes with obedience so automatic as to be laughable: it almost tempted me to wait until he was fully conscious and inquire as to whether he remembered anything of the episode. I chastised myself for the thought. Disturbing him with such nonsense would be both impractical and indecent.

 

The sheer lack of interest Bell displayed in discovering the reasons Cream had had for starting an association with the Rucastles did not surprise me. I knew that no sooner would he turn to the details of lesser importance than our main goal would be achieved.

But something worried me, and I could not stop puzzling over Cream's seemingly random choice of place and time. It was odd enough that Miss Hunter was the first person we'd encountered upon arriving in Crewe (although no doubt it was to be partially attributed to the singular talents of the Doctor's), but even stranger seemed the fact that Cream would have lent any money, let alone a considerable amount, to anybody. In Dunwich, Bell had prevented him from acquiring financial freedom and likely left him quite impoverished. I knew from experience what this meant - certainly it did not include being a generous creditor, Cream's lack of generosity aside.

According to the Doctor, we were to take no action until the late evening, when the crucial stage of the investigation was to take place. It did nothing to distract me from these questions I could not find any answer to.

If Rucastle had killed Alice, why ever did Neill help him? Was it merely to drive us to despair?

If, on the other hand, she had been slain by Neill himself, why did he stay in Crewe when doing so meant putting himself in peril?

For all his genius, Bell had but one weakness: he saw everything and always knew what to do. Like a bloodhound, he never left the trail as long as it was discernible; from one clue to another, on and on he went. For the details he knew to be irrelevant he had had little patience. That peculiarity of his would also account for how blind he was to the presence of others when absorbed in an investigation – it was not that he didn’t care or sympathize, or that he wasn’t interested: rather, expressing these sentiments simply never occurred to him.

I had never known him to be mistaken in his deductions regarding the clues at hand. Even during the Cream case, when I was embittered beyond belief and ill-receptive to the wonders of human nature, to watch him work was fascinating. There were instances when it prompted me to wonder tentatively as to why sixteen years ago he chose me, of all people, to be his clerk; certainly I’d never been the most brilliant of medical students, my unhappy home life devouring much of my energy and motivation.

But it was also true that he abandoned the seemingly deadlock branches of a bigger case quickly and without regret. When working alone, this must have been an agreeable strategy, and I knew it was born out of necessity. So, rather than giving advice where it wasn’t needed, I figured I could well make myself useful by looking into the less urgent matters.

What I planned to do was to go and make inquiries about the late Jonathan Smith.

 

In that I was much helped by what would have normally hurt me, that is the Doctor’s apparent attitude of quiet indifference. I confess I did feel quite inadequate whenever I perceived the contrast between this attitude and my own anxious desire to protect his wellbeing, all the stronger after Dunwich and fuelled by his reminding me constantly of the danger we both were in. Whether it troubled me because I cared too much or because he appeared to care little I wasn’t sure.

But I was grateful for it now, for certainly he wouldn’t have taken kindly to me going out of my way to prove him wrong. As it was, my questions seemed to amuse him:

“Ah, my ever doubtful Doyle,” he said. “Well, go ahead, make something of it. It is important, you are correct in that regard; but no more important than for us to avoid being shot or dealt with in some other disagreeable fashion.”

 

The Doctor spread his toast with jam, meticulously wiping the silver knife against the crust. Inwardly I shuddered a little at the idea of combining the sweet toast with cold turkey; the resulting flavour must have been quite dreadful. On the other hand, it probably wasn't my place to judge - at least Bell refrained from turning his bed into a dining table, something I could not say of myself - and so I offered no comment.

Instead, I took the ring out of my breast pocket and sent it rolling to him across the table. The Doctor caught it automatically; contemplated it for a moment, then lifted his gaze at me. I observed with deep satisfaction that he was more than slightly confused.

"Well," I said, trying hard not to smile, "my dear Doctor, what do you make of it?"

He put the toast down and wrinkled the bridge of his nose.

"Doyle, really? Are you not afraid that something like that episode with your watch will occur again? But then this is not yours-" finally he turned his attention to the ring, tilting his head a little, "-no, not at all.”

Undoubtedly he noticed that I had changed mine for Louise's, but he never said anything to that effect, for which I was thankful. Now he seemed to not remember, absorbed as he was in studying the rose gold band I gave him.

"Curious," he said finally. "Before it was stolen, it belonged to a man; however, it was a woman who bought it. She may be a Lutheran, or else she is a woman of remarkable character; she has some means but isn't very rich. As to the man himself, he is of average complexion, has thin, long fingers, does not smoke, and is a member of a hunting club. There is also a certain air of carelessness to his character. Perhaps they recently had a bit of a falling-out, too."

There was something uncanny in the way his conclusions echoed what I knew to be the truth. In some regards he was wrong, if through no fault of his - I had deliberately left him unaware of how I came in possession of the thing. But every deduction he made was an odd, distorted reflection of the real fact, too close to it in spirit to be called completely untrue.

"She's dead," I said. "If that can be called a bit of a falling-out. And he-"

At this moment the Doctor dropped the knife with a piece of butter into the jam.

"Where were you," the good-natured dreaminess was gone from his eyes, giving way to sharp, clear astonishment, "this morning? Crewe Arms?"

I sighed.

"Yes. There, Doctor, why did you need to spoil the jam?"

"That's because you are being overly dramatic," he fished the knife out, put it onto the plate and pressed his finger against his lips. There still was a singular sonority to his voice, and he was clutching the ring tight in his hand. "So the traces on the gold are indeed left by a shotgun grip, and it is true that the man's hand was recently awash with blood, but it wasn't the blood of a wild animal... it was that of poor Jonathan Smith, wasn't it, Doyle?"

"Cream was Alice's fiance," I said quietly. Bell nodded a little.

"How... how did you acquire it?" he asked.

"A coincidence, really. I thought I could learn something new about that Jonathan Smith character, but all I succeeded in was establishing that he could not have possibly had anything in common with Cream. And then I noticed the ring on the hand of this man who was the last to see Smith - and I saw it was scraped as though to hide something; the initials of the owner, I thought. I've no doubt the fellow imagined he was clever to hide the ring in plain sight, but the scratches gave him away."

"There aren't many well-to-do people visiting this place, and no ladies, I expect. So I risked bluffing and told him that I knew the man he pickpocketed, and described Neill to the best of my ability, including the mask and the scarf. After that, he was only glad that I agreed to not take him to the police, and the ring was mine.'

"Imagine my astonishment when, in an answer to my question as to whether the initials were those of Patrick Baumann or of Thomas Cream, he told me that the letters were A and R – Alice Rucastle, I knew. It was nonplussing per se, but you cannot deny that it does make every sense. I then asked if the ring was on the fourth finger, and he said yes, though undoubtedly he must have been thinking me eccentric at best and insane at worst."

"See, that’s what I meant when I said that there was too little connection between Cream and the Rucastle family for him to be interested in them. Now it is clear, at least, why he had any kind of business with Rucastle. I only wonder as to why he chose Alice – there must have been something about her that made her an attractive prey."

"You really are quite extraordinary," said the Doctor after some pause. I imagine I must've blushed, because I did feel very pleased, both by the quiet wonder in his voice and the fact that we were a little closer to catching Neill. "Pray do keep disagreeing with me, Doyle. It seems to yield wonderful results."

Encouraged by this nontrivial reaction, I ventured to inquire as to what he thought were the reasons for Cream's initial interest in Alice Rucastle. The wistful heavy-lidded expression with which the Doctor was still looking at me had dissolved; he nearly had me believe that my question troubled him, but upon observing him a little longer I decided that he was simply thinking how to answer.

And indeed he said, "we may never know that," with a kind of carefulness that suggested reluctance to speculate rather than lack of knowledge for doing so. I decided it would be best to leave the topic well alone.

"All right," I said, sipping my tea. "But who murdered her - was it Cream, or Rucastle? More importantly, why didn't they kill the American lady? There would've been no need to go to such lengths if they simply slaughtered the woman."

"I imagine she must have some kind of insurance against them. Perhaps they are trying to hold her back not merely because she was a chance witness to Alice's death, but because she also happens to be in possession of incriminating evidence. She does not go to the police as she believes the family ritual to be genuine; but at the same time she’s afraid for her own life, and she shan’t allow Cream to threaten her."

"I see," replied I at length. I saw instantly the difficulty we were presented with - there was no trying to retrieve the hypothetical evidence from our American, much as we'd have liked to do that. Considering the nature of the document I and Miss Hunter saw yesterday, she could well go to the Rucastles and tell them all about our interest in the affair. Our presence in Crewe must have been no secret to them, for undoubtedly Cream had told them to beware any unwarranted inquiries. I thought it unlikely, however, that they knew anything specific; certainly not our names, nor what our motives were for trying to apprehend him.

"As to your first question," he said at that moment, "it is of little importance. We shall never know this until there is evidence, and I am fairly sure there's nothing we can do but wait for the evening to come."

Here, again, a spark of animation had appeared in his features. He shot me a quick look.

"I don't believe you know just how well your discovery supports our working theory. There was an odd kind of regularity to the dates in Rucastle's credit column; that is, the closer to the present day, the more debts were returned to him every week. Admittedly I wasn't sure what to make of it. Then I figured, if he demanded that money be returned to him, he must have needed it for some other purpose - the most plausible guess being to repay his debt to Cream - but I was at a loss to say just why Cream would give him anything in the first place. Until now I've been doubting if the receipt was not a forgery. But if Alice was indeed Cream's fiancee, it is understandable that Neill wished neither for Rucastle to protest against his dangling after Rucastle's daughter nor for Alice to suspect that he was not entirely sincere."

"So that was why," I said slowly, satisfied that at least one of my questions was answered. "But does the romance not strike you as unlikely? What on earth could she find in Cream, with his handsomeness gone?"

"Why but this is the source of our woes, Doyle," responded Bell, the smile wiped from his face. "There is so much more to Cream than physical beauty."

But, however true that statement might have been, I felt quiet contentment settle between us instead of the dark and heavy silence that seemed to always accompany us on that investigation. Though I knew it to be deceitful - worse, I knew it was but an illusion, a slip of melting ice preventing us from falling into bottomless gloom - I had, I confess, succumbed to it for a while. And indeed it was hard not to cheer up at least a little when all we met with was success, when the courageous Miss Hunter was our ally, and when Bell tried, if awkwardly, to be considerate and kind towards me.

 

Fate, however, was intent on allowing us not a briefest moment of unspoilt cheer. The Doctor had soon grown restless, our idleness getting on his nerves, and I had to drag him outside before he began doing something akin to shooting the walls in an attempt to find distraction.

"Horrid murders in the town!" informed us somebody's happy voice, and I turned, my blood running cold. Bell was already bending down to bring himself level with the boy; apparently there was something telltale in his expression, because even that epitome of everything that was street urchins blinked and stepped back a little.

"Horrid, are they," said the Doctor quietly. The boy nodded with much quickness and made some more steps away from us, nearly stumbling over somebody's cane. But the Doctor merely contemplated him for a moment and took one of his papers, throwing him a coin in exchange. The boy stared at the coin as though it were manna from heaven, then back at us; the Doctor, however, had lost any interest in him and was instead striding down the street. I almost had to run to catch up with him.

Immediately his bony fingers caught my forearm, and he gave the newspaper to me without so much as looking at it himself.

"Claws and wolves when you love," he said, while I studied the first page. "Who is the victim?"

"Jezebel Breck, a local Jew, aged 32."

No reaction from the Doctor followed. There was an edge to his voice that prompted me to take a closer look at him; to be so visibly affected by the death of a stranger was not like Bell, and I knew then that he must’ve seen something else in it, something that was worse than the fates of Smith and Breck combined.

“Perhaps there is a connection-“ I began tentatively, only to be cut off:

“There’s none,” the Doctor said. “But we may have to pay some attention to the murder, if only to deceive Cream. See, Doyle, I was right in supposing that Smith’s death was his attempt to distract us from the only thing that truly interests him in Crewe – the estate of the Copper Beeches. And I did think that he might try to achieve this goal once more. I thought that, in some sense, it would even- that it would mean that he’s unaware of our progress in the inquiry.”

"No," I shook my head, biting my lips. "No, it can't be. It is madness."

"As is everything else about him, and about this damn case. Our advantage is in being faster; we ought to catch him unawares. For now, we can only do our best to prevent others from dying. We should pretend we are interested in Jezebel Breck, that is, and make sure nobody can harm Miss Hunter."

I nodded, silent. In front of us there glittered, high in the dark grey sky, the brazen cross of the Hightown Methodist Church; and for once, the sight seemed to offer neither hope nor comfort. I saw then something ominous in it, something otherworldly in the dead stillness of its outline against the swirling and streaming clouds.

"It bothers me," murmured Bell after a while, stopping under a still-burning street lamp. Most of the windows I could see were dark, but there appeared a series of faint pearl strips on the wooden walls of the nearby houses; I knew the sun was about to rise. "There’s so little time left. He may try something else if he learns that we are on the right track."

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” I replied.

Though I stood so close as to be able to touch him, his gaze was wandering over the street behind my back. I did not turn; I knew it was completely devoid of interest.

“No,” he said. “No, you’re right. There is nothing.”

Then he finally looked at me, letting out a quiet sigh.

"All right, Doyle; come. We shall make do with the murder of Jezebel Breck."


	8. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end of the chapter for a long and tedious note on the timeline of the story and its relationship with the real historical events of the period. It isn't important for the understanding of the work, I simply felt like writing it.

By three o'clock I knew more about the life of Mrs. Breck than her next-of-kin, Matthew Breck, ever would. I knew that she had liked a glass of sherry on Sunday evening, that she had kept a poodle, that in the past she had had at least two lovers; I knew that she had suffered a miscarriage and had been losing her faith.

Bell was sitting on the edge of the autopsy table, blurting these conclusions out one after another. He was pale and nearly trembling.               

"Doctor, I beg you!" I interrupted upon hearing him mention her miscarriage. "Surely we do not need to know that?"

"Accept my apologies," he said forthwith, giving me a nervous glance. "No, we do not need to know any of that."

I walked towards the body and examined it briefly. It was a classic picture of a cardiac arrest; none of the signs would have alarmed me had it been not for the letters carved on her chest. Autolysis had already started eating at the edges of the wounds, her exposed flesh flaccid and drained of blood.

"Do you think it was a poison?" I asked.

"Oh, cyanide, I believe," responded the Doctor, same frantic energy in his voice. He was staring at the opposite wall, his blue eyes unseeing, as though he could somehow divine the workings of Cream's mind and foretell his next move.

"But she died in much suffering," said I. "Slowly, too."

Without so much as turning towards me he clapped me on the shoulder.

"Aye, Doyle," he said, "her nails are damaged, there are splinters in her fingers. Wooden floor. He must have wanted her to suffer. Not much consolation to us, is it?"

Sighing, I sat on the chair beside him and hid my face in my hands. He would not notice, I fear, if I answered.

 

Even though I trust that I have written nothing that would suggest the existence of any impropriety in the relationship between myself and Miss Violet Hunter, I feel that I owe the (albeit hypothetical) reader of this manuscript at least some explanation as to why I sought her out the following evening and indeed spent most of it in her company.

The simple and dismal truth is, I was afraid. Now that Jezebel Breck had died, I was fairly certain that the Doctor's theory would prove to be correct; the murders were Cream's attempts at distracting us from the affair of the Copper Beeches. We had only briefly succumbed to this deception, and now, thanks to Bell's remarkable talents, our party was back on the right track. Of that I was unquestionably glad. However, I was also aware that every successful step we made must've been making Cream's irritation worse; his wish to defeat us, more desperate. Like Charlotte Jefford, Violet Hunter was a most convenient target for him - not in the least because she became an active participant in the inquiry.

I was unsure how to account for my sudden interest in her person. To explain frankly the cause of my anxiety was the worst I could do, that much I knew. To let her think that I had reasons of other kind, on the other hand, felt dishonest; but I was willing to appear a man of lesser integrity if that meant protecting her.

"I grew up in Sussex," she said in an answer to my questioning her politely about her life. "The village of Fairlight - it is a poetic name, is it not? I left it a long time ago, but I still take some pride in the beauty and the spirit of that place. It stands by the seashore amongst the steep hills on this side of the English Channel; upon climbing these hills one can just see the outline of the French coast if he squints hard enough, and if there are no clouds. We often wandered there, I and some of my friends - including, incidentally, Evelyn."

The last traces of my illness seemed to be gone. I used that fact, and Bell's obliviousness to anything that was not the investigation at hand, to sneak past him unnoticed and unquestioned. And so it came about that no one knew where I was but Miss Hunter; I suppose I ought to have known this to be an unwise course of action, but alas I did not think of it. Perhaps I did not want to dwell upon any such thoughts - I was so very tired of all the safety precautions that needed to be conceived and taken.

And partly it was because Miss Hunter proved to be a good distraction. She was intelligent, and there was a simple power to her words that cried a born storyteller. Moreover, she knew not of Cream's nature and of my work with the Doctor; after the despair we had shared with Bell, her unfaltering optimism, her laughter were refreshing. I looked at how her dry pastel lips twitched with what undoubtedly was a small smile, at the swift gestures of her hands, and felt somewhat comforted by this reassurance that happiness still existed in the world.

She told me some more about her childhood, and about that episode with her mathematics tutor who once found, alas too late, that somebody had filled his shoes with cherries.

"To this day we all are clueless as to the identity of the perpetrator," she said with almost comical seriousness. For some moments she maintained the facade, then clasped a hand over her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle her laughter. Admittedly I had to bite my lower lip, too.

Miss Hunter appeared glad of my company, and glad of that opportunity to talk with somebody other than the Rucastles; no wonder - I knew she must have been very lonely as of late, alone in a strange city with not a living soul to care if she was alive and well. For indeed the closer she drew to the present time, the sadder her stories became. I learnt that her father had gone missing at sea when she turned sixteen. Her mother, it appears, had died earlier of consumption - a kind of death not uncommon at the time, and one it pained me to hear about. After half an hour of such conversation she had my sincerest sympathy and admiration, if not yet trust. This would account for the fact that I had somewhat lowered my guard and, when she asked me about my own life, omitted little - save for the story of my father, of course (he had died that autumn, an event I've no wish to dwell upon in present account), and for the finer details of my work with the Doctor. The latter was probably a strategic mistake on my part - instantly she inquired as to the source of our association and our friendship, direct as appeared to be her custom.

The request had me searching for words. I was ill prepared to phrase the answer so as to avoid lying, but to tell her the whole truth I was prepared even less.

"I am not sure what I can say and what I must keep to myself," I said finally, deciding to be as truthful as I could. "But we met in eighteen seventy-six in the University of Edinburgh. I was, as you might've guessed, studying medicine - with varying degrees of success, I admit. He was brilliant, one of the most popular lecturers in the establishment. No wonder his unorthodox methods rose considerable controversy; the very first time I met him, he was shooting a corpse."

Miss Hunter gave an exclamation of surprise. I am afraid I smiled as though shooting corpses were a perfectly respectable pastime; hopefully, she now knew enough of the Doctor to understand that we neither of us were out of our minds.

"Then I proceeded to hurl some insults at him," I added, "in response to which he eventually made me his outpatient clerk."

This elicited much amusement from my companion.

"This is an eccentric reaction to being insulted, if I've ever heard of one," laughed she. I laughed, too, and agreed that it was; in truth, though those were not the lighter times of my life, I was fond of the memory. Had it been not for Bell's peculiar ways, I might have left the University and never had him for a mentor, which would have undoubtedly brought much misery into my existence.

But then it could have been for the best, I thought in spite of myself, and felt the familiar pang of dull pain. My distress must've been evident, because Miss Hunter was observing the changes in my expression with some worry - she could hardly divine the subject of my reflections, but I knew she must've understood something.

Partly for her sake, and partly to restore my own spirits, I continued the inner debate. The main objection to that reasoning was obvious - Cream would have still killed Elsbeth, with me to see it or without. Would he not? But maybe he'd have chosen Sophie Jex-Blake, or some other woman; perhaps Elsbeth could've been spared.

I was instantly ashamed of my own speculations, especially since, my efforts notwithstanding, they increasingly lacked any kind of logic. Whom, after all, was I trying to bargain with? Could I not wish for Cream to have never been born, and yet not regret having met the Doctor?

"Well, I really must go, Doctor," said Miss Hunter, looking around her with an expression of pleasure and returning her attention to me to clasp my hand in reassurance. "Don't worry, I'll follow Dr. Bell's instructions to the letter. There shall be nothing to prevent you from apprehending the- whoever he is."

Her trust touched me. That she went with our plan without so much as asking for Cream's name seemed to me astonishing, and I could barely help feeling that we - that I, by not telling her the truth, was taking advantage of her.

But, though it was with some uneasiness that I thanked her and urged her to be careful once again, I knew there was no stopping now. Reliable or not, the scheme was at work and I could do no more to alter its course than if it were a moving snow avalanche.

 

Half a minute later I was quite alone in the middle of some square I could not put a name on. The cold day was condensing into lumps of thick yellow light behind the house roofs. I lingered, though in truth there was little for me to do but to return to the Doctor; and, thanks perhaps to these odd moments of mental haze, I failed to notice a man coming towards me. When suddenly he greeted me, his voice startled me immensely. Making an effort to restrain myself from darting aside, I looked up. To be sure, I did not think I knew him, but there was something vaguely familiar in that large face and the chestnut stubble on his chin - the kind of familiarity one feels when he sees a person resembling a well-known fictional character. I was just starting to think that the gentleman might have reminded me of someone from Dickens, when he called me by my name, causing much confusion on my part.

"Dr. Doyle," he cried animatedly. "Do you not know me? O, surely Miss Hunter must have told you something about Jephro Rucastle!"

Rucastle! The name did nothing to stop my inner turmoil. I was at a loss to react.

"Why yes," I said in a tone as neutral as I could muster. "She mentioned that you were her employer - the owner of the estate of the Copper Beeches, if I recall correctly.”

He went on:

"She has told us so much about you and Dr. Bell! It is my pleasure to meet you in person. You'll excuse me for approaching you, but I happened to see you in Miss Hunter's company and thought that I might as well make an acquaintance."

"Pleased to meet you," said I to that, extending my hand towards him. He took it and gave it an overabundantly energetic shake. Naturally I did not believe a word of what he was saying; and I still had no idea as to what kind of demeanour to assume, but I was determined not to reveal that I knew anything of him beyond the fact that he was Heather's grandfather.

"Excellent, excellent," cried Rucastle. My hand still remained firmly clasped in his. "Let's get ourselves some beer, Doctor!"

"I'm not one to turn down such an offer," I said instantly, all too aware that any outward display of hesitation might give me away.

We walked down the street that led from the nameless square south. It was growing dark, and I felt first snowflakes tickle my neck and my ears. The cold was not to my liking, and nor would I have welcomed another round of influenza - not when everything depended on me and the Doctor. But the warmth of the pub did not improve my mood. I felt growing anxiety regarding Rucastle's queer behaviour. Truth to be told, I should have not gone with him at all, for, as I already mentioned, nobody knew where I was and I was sure the Doctor would scold me for such carelessness, but my prudence must have been dulled by the double strain of having to act naturally (something that came to me with much difficulty) as well as work out Rucastle's motives.

I tried contemplating the development, but I was unsure what to think. Was he sent by Cream? If yes, what was it that Cream hoped to learn (surely he did not consider us so dull as to tell anything to Rucastle)?

Could it be that he meant to do harm to me?

It hardly helped that, having spent the last week in the company of the Doctor, a man quiet and reserved, I was finding it difficult to put up with Rucastle's loudness and exuberance.

 

I had not for a moment forgotten that he had greeted me first. In the uneven twilight of the room I searched for clues in his expression, in his gestures - the occasional nervous tremble; the sweating unexplained by the warmth of the air; the furtive gleam to his small light eyes. To my frustration, I saw nothing definite. The alternation of shadows and oily yellow light had obscured his features, making them frightfully flowing, molten with gleam and burnt with darkness.

Naturally I did not think that Miss Hunter had told him about me. And if, for some inexplicable reason, she were to do so, surely she would not have described me so as for him to recognize my face?

But on the other hand, to say that I was red-headed would have probably been enough for Rucastle to make an educated guess. And as to her reasons - why there could be plenty. It would not be the first time when I and the Doctor met with an apparent ally playing a double game.

I did not reject his offer to buy me a drink, but I only pretended to have drunk it – if he were to try something drastic, I thought, poison would be the option he’d go for. Being a physician by education, if not by spirit, Cream had some knowledge of poisons and could probably deceive the Crewe coroner (though not Bell). Who’d swear to have seen Rucastle with me, me and the Doctor being complete strangers to the Crewe folk?

Rucastle was getting tipsy, and his fingers felt slick when he tapped me on the shoulder, brushing against the bare skin of my clavicle (it took me all my self-control not to recoil from the touch), but time went on and he took no action apart from chatting about all manners of things. Every now and then I would nod and smile, indicating that I was still listening; in truth I understood not a word. All I could think of was what he expected to happen.

If he used poison, it occurred to me, he might wait for the first symptoms to become apparent. Should I try to mimic them? Of course I did not know what the substance was, and the effect depended on the dose, but I could eliminate everything instant (as he displayed no signs of alarm at my apparent lack of distress) and make the signs generic enough for them to be attributed to almost any poison I knew. I doubted that Rucastle was much of a specialist in that field.

Whatever sympathy I might have had for him vanished with the dry thistle flower burnt by Joseph Bell. Concern for my own safety would not stop me, for I risked nothing by trying to provoke him. In the worst case, he would simply think that I was genuinely unwell or that I was making up excuses to return to the Doctor with my news regarding his unexpected appearance.

 

And so I tried, cautiously at first, to give him an impression that I was feeling increasingly ill. I was now shivering, my breathing shallow and irregular; wringing the skin of my left hand gave me an air of genuine distress (in fact I'm afraid I inflicted an impressive bruise on myself, my skin being naturally thin and pale). After some ten minutes of such disagreeable pastime I put my coat back on, deciding to pretend that I was getting cold.

When I finally dared look at Rucastle for any prolonged amount of time, I was suddenly afraid that I overplayed it. There was strikingly little astonishment in his eyes, and certainly no compassion. Then, in an answer to the roving look I gave him, a corner of his mouth curled up ever so slightly; and I felt a surge of delight. So I was correct, and he did try to poison me!

"I'm not feeling well," I told him in a weak voice. "I'd better get going now."

"Oh yes you'd better," he said with what looked to me like barely concealed glee. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Doyle."

This was a risky move, but I grabbed his sleeve then, with little enough strength for him to think me weakened.

"D-did you-" I stammered, "you do not- have anything to do with him?"

"Him?"

"You'd know whom I'm talking about-"

"I do," said Rucastle, and I made an attempt to assume an expression of disbelief. He smiled at that. "But I told you nothing, and you've no time to prove your hypothesis. This tall pesky fellow who's so keen on sticking his hooked nose where it doesn't belong shan't have any time, either. In fact, he'll probably be too distraught to care, don't you think?"

And with these words he freed himself from my grip with much agility, turned away and hurried towards the door. I made a movement as if to stumble, mostly to convince Rucastle beyond any reasonable doubt, but also because I felt the need to mask the way I huffed with laughter at his description of the Doctor. I'd no doubt Bell himself would find it difficult not to laugh; of all the unflattering epithets he'd been subject to, "pesky" was one of the oddest.

 

And so Rucastle was gone and I was left alone (if I am not to count a dozen people drunk beyond recognition - the more reasonable folk was, I imagine, wary of coming out on such a chilly night). At last nothing was stopping me from joining Bell in what promised to be a task more daring than any other we had hitherto performed. For a moment I contemplated the possibility that Rucastle would wait outside to witness the agitation in which my supposed death was to result, but found it unlikely; there was too much risk for him in such an undertaking. He did not strike me as a reckless man.

Nevertheless I studied the street with some caution before walking out of the door. Satisfied to find it empty, I then turned left and started to walk back: I'd find my way from the square, even unfamiliar as I was with the topography of the town.

It was now completely dark. There were only gaslights to guide me, and a few meagre stars in the sky that did not give away much light. But, though I was in a state of pleasant haze (my behaviour in Rucastle's presence having left me stupidly self-satisfied) and hence less than observant, I could not fail to notice the lanky figure of a man who was walking down the street with such hurriedness as to nearly run.

I stopped in my tracks. There was something very familiar about that posture, about the way every second step he made was slightly shorter than the previous one, giving his gait a noticeable hitch. But surely it could not be...?

"Bell?" I called after some hesitation. He turned to me at once.

And indeed it was the Doctor, but what a sight he presented! The cold notwithstanding, his head was bare, his white hair fluffy with snow. He wore no gloves; he carried no cane. But, above all, his expression struck me. It made him look unfamiliar, to the point where I could not at once recognize the emotion.

Then he suddenly was mere inches away from me, holding me by the shoulders.

"Look at me," he demanded. I saw now, with unutterable astonishment, that he was positively panicked; and I should've understood then what he was talking about, but his behaviour confused me so much that I merely locked my hands on his wrists out of instinctive urge to comfort him. The gesture seemed to have done him bad: he had to purse his lips to prevent them from trembling, and his grip on me grew outright painful.

" _Keep looking at me_." A hint of despair crept into his voice. "Do not avert your gaze. Do not avert your gaze, is this understood?"

Then I remembered, and cursed my slowness.

"I'm all right, I swear that," I told him as gently as I could. "I knew he'd try something like this. But how on earth did you-"

At first he seemed to disbelieve me, to my dismay; I did not know how to reassure him that my words were not spoken in poison-induced delirium but were indeed the truth. But I did as I was bid, dutifully refraining from blinking too often, and saw some colour return to his face as he watched me and found no evidence of nystagmus (which was what I assumed he was looking for).

He gave a long, hitching sigh, releasing my shoulders and seizing the lapels of my coat instead. His eyes were still unnaturally wide.

"You... do seem to be fine," he said hesitantly. I told him once again that I was, moved almost to tears by the sheer frenzy of his reaction. I now thought myself an exceptionally thankless fellow to have considered him indifferent; but at the same time I doubted the reality of the whole thing, so unlike the Doctor it was to be frightened. I do not believe I had ever seen him like that. Mournful, worried, angry, desperate, yes; but never in fear.

"My dear Doctor-" I began, and could not continue; I was too happy and too unhappy all at once, and, above all, utterly shaken and confused. For a while we stood in silence.

"Tell me," I prodded at last, to distract myself rather than him. "How did you know?"

Bell winced, let go of me and ran his fingers through his snow-clad hair.

"Not an ingenious chain of deductions, I fear," he answered with some effort. After that, it seemed that it became easier for him to speak. "Miss Hunter saw you leaving Prince Albert Square in the company of Rucastle and went straight to me. She did not know if she should have interfered, and in retrospect I think she was right to have refrained from doing so. It would not do to undermine the whole plan because of a fleeting danger to your life you proved to be perfectly capable of averting."

"But why were you sure it would be cyanide?"

"Ah, you noticed I was looking for nystagmus. Good. That's because Mrs. Breck, may she rest in peace, was administered an insufficient amount of poison. Had it been just a little less, she would have had a chance still; at the time I thought Cream wanted her to suffer, but, when Miss Hunter came to me tonight, I was instantly alarmed to the possibility that he had limited access to cyanide and was saving it for the next victim; that is to say, for you, Doyle."

At this he flinched, bracing himself with his arms in such a helpless movement that it split my heart as I saw it. Though his replies were both coherent and to the point, the conversation appeared to have done little to calm him down.

"I suppose I should not have doubted you," he said after a while, startling me. "But I admit it was difficult to think logically... We may either of us die now, Doyle, I well understand that. And yet I wish I could spare you the fate."

I could hardly allow myself to react to that confession, to show him what it meant to me. I felt, in some sense, responsible for keeping the situation under control - now that he seemed to be in no state to do so. I knew that Cream wanted us to be vulnerable, shaken, afraid; we could not succumb to his malicious plans.

Upon some inner hesitation I extended my hand to the Doctor.

"Come, Bell," I said, trying not unsuccessfully to keep the tremor out of my voice. "Let's get you home; you are looking awful."

He hastily gripped me by the wrist, but shook his head at the offer.

"We've no time. We're going to the Copper Beeches."

And he led me away into the snowy darkness, walking forward with singular confidence, quick as ever. A change came over his whole manner - he, too, must have felt that to be manipulated by our nemesis would not do; it was my hope that there was no other reason. Then, as we were leaving the street lamps behind, unlit streets and lanes spreading out ahead of us, I tried to think of it no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I began to write this work, I was presented with a dilemma: to set it in the 1880s (immediately after the events of the first part of _The Dark Water_ , disregarding the epilogue) or in early 1890s (after the epilogue). For some time I erroneously assumed that little time passed between the events of TDW and those of the epilogue (hence my thinking that Cream acted as a slowpoke in the incident with Jesse James's death), but I ascertained that TDW takes place in mid-1880s.
> 
> On the one hand, I wanted The Final Problem to have been written and Innes to be in his late teens. On the other hand, I thought that Bell should be forty-ish (which he is in TDW. Yeah, he is forty-something - born in 1837. Richardson, amazing as he is, was a bit old for the part), and that, above all, Cream should reappear shortly after TDW, not wait for half a freaking decade.
> 
> In the end, I fear I have screwed it up a little. I try not to mention their age or the history of the Cream case, but I kind of went with an underlying assumption that the 1880s do not exist and that the events take place immediately after TDW, being nevertheless set in the 1890s.
> 
> *flips table* I suppose I shall just reconcile myself with the fact that Pirie and I are worthy upholders of the great literary tradition of timeline-screwing. It does, after all, place me in the company of Wodehouse, Christie, and Conan Doyle.
> 
> As to all the deaths mentioned: Charles Altamont Doyle did indeed die in 1893; Louisa Doyle, however, does not die until more than a decade later (1906). I killed her mostly because I could not with the idea that Doyle would leave her alone, but also because the epilogue of TDW gives the reader an impression that she's already seriously unwell.
> 
> And, while we are on the subject of differing universes/timelines: I accept all the TV canon as a background for this work, but, since it is unknown just when exactly it takes place, I might take some liberties with it. Because _White Knight Stratagem_ is set in the beginning of Doyle's writing career (presumably, shortly after 1887), it should be preceded by _The Dark Water_ , though - assuming they're ultimately parts of the same story.
> 
> As to my (un)faithfulness to the real historical timeline: though I try to follow it whenever possible, I view neither TV! nor book!Bell and Doyle as identical to their historical prototypes. The book!version of the Doctor, in particular, is quite different from the real Joseph Bell (though it might be partly due to Doyle being an unreliable narrator).
> 
> I should probably mention that in the books, Heather Grace seems to have been murdered off-stage? Other than that, that's the end of this confusing excursus into the wonders of various Bell&Doyle timelines.


	9. Where No Sound Ever Reaches

There were candles. I could not conceive of any plausible explanation Rucastle could give Miss Hunter, but there were candles - about twenty or thirty of them, illuminating the clearance with their golden light. With the snowfall over and the sky cleared, the forest looked Dickensian.

I felt the Doctor's fingers drum my elbow absently, as though he were sitting in the warmth of a house lost in thought rather than hunting down a homicidal maniac in the middle of nowhere. In truth, this meant extreme mental concentration; I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was perfectly oblivious to what he was doing.

But either way, I did not mind. I was too busy observing our surroundings and the thin dark figure some fifty feet away from us. Most of the time, the wind carried her voice away; but sometimes I was able to hear bits of what she was saying, and often I recognized the lines.

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert;"

I almost could not help but think that she chose it on purpose, or else unconsciously recited what she felt was appropriate under the circumstances. Even before she had uttered them, the last lines sounded vivid in my ears: "nothing beside remains; round the decay of that colossal wreck..."

And yet I was not to be taken with the effect. O! I was well protected from the charm of romantic poetry now! No grand pictures of tempestuous elements, no lofty philosophizing could measure up to the chill of terror and the foreboding of impending doom my heart was so full of. Reasonably, I knew we had a chance - if ever anybody had a chance to overcome Cream! - but another voice told me with certainty that nothing good awaited us in the end of that quest. That nothing good ever awaited us; that it was only darkness we'd uncover.

And also, more than ever, I was determined to disallow him to harm any of those who were party to the case. It was imperative that Bell, Miss Hunter, Heather Rucastle, and the nameless American be safe. Any other outcome was unthinkable; it felt as if I'd die if I failed to protect them, die more truly and finally than of wounds or poison.

 

There were other voices. These were clearer and more distinct than that of Miss Hunter, for we stood closer to the river than the clearance. It worried me more than a little that, though I heard both Rucastle and his wife, there was no sign of Cream; but to the Doctor it seemed to be of little concern. He was rather absorbed in watching Miss Hunter, to the point where I wondered if maybe he thought her unreliable or knew something about her that he did not care to tell me.

“We ought to interfere now,” he suddenly whispered, with a sense of urgency.

“But Cream-“

“-is nowhere to be seen. And yet we ought to interfere.”

It sounded to me insane. I did not know what had come over him, or why ever he would risk the outcome of the whole undertaking in such unadvised a fashion.

“Bell, listen-“

“You think me mad,” he whispered, more hurriedly still. “Look, Doyle; look! She has a loaded derringer. She’s about to do- oh, she’s about to reveal her knowledge of Rucastle’s scheme, she intends to threaten them!”

And now that I looked at her hands, I, too, could make out the faint yet unmistakeable outline of a small pocket pistol she held tightly. The tension in the angle of her elbow was telltale - she looked as though she were preparing to take action in a matter of seconds, and I doubted if we could do anything to stop her.

"Well, let her do it, then," I said to him. "If he's there, perhaps she'll provoke him to reveal himself. We're close; we'll keep her safe."

"That's not it. I think- you see, I think that somehow, Cream has tricked her into doing just that, that he hopes for the confusion to distract us. And I fear I know the cause."

There, he'd turned away from me and dived into the gloom of the grove. I followed him, alarmed beyond description not so much because I understood the danger as because of the obvious signs of unease in him. I realized he saw some serious menace in what he reasoned would happen; and I decided then that I'd obey his orders unquestioningly, no matter their strangeness.

We were almost in the open, and in a moment we'd step into the second clearance where the Rucastles stood with the unfortunate old lady. But so, I suddenly saw, would Miss Hunter; for she was running in parallel to us, and I could already hear the cries of alarm on our left.

The Doctor squeezed my hand.

"Look for Heather," he urged breathlessly. "We need to know if she isn't hurt."

 

"Unless you stay quiet," said a voice from behind, "she will be.”

I turned and could not prevent myself from crying out. Not six feet away from us, right above the stream of steaming black water, there stood Cream. In his arms he held the little Heather Rucastle, rocking her slightly as though to lull her to sleep.

"Step back," ordered he. I made a couple of steps backwards and froze, my hand on the handle of the revolver. The Doctor lingered for a moment and then followed my example in one smooth and noiseless movement. My eyes were fixed on Cream's figure.

There was little for us to do. I thought of and rejected a dozen options in that infinite second. I was thinking that maybe, if I shot him, there would be a chance for me to snatch the child away from him before he fell into the river; but I knew I could not risk her life. Then I considered the possibility of seizing them both and shooting him then, and rejected it, too, because I did not doubt that Cream had brought a firearm of his own, and that he'd use it the instance he perceived my intentions.

Covered with a black scarf though his face was, from the subtle and horrible change in his eyes lit by the cold even light I could understand that he was smiling at us.

"You would not dare harm the child," he said slowly. "Shout, and I kill her. Run, and I kill her. Do anything, anything at all I did not order you to do, and I kill her."

"You cannot escape us," said the Doctor, his voice devoid of feeling. "Even if you walk with her in your arms, it won't be long until you're captured."

"Reasonable, very reasonable." He stopped talking for a second, but his mouth under the scarf still moved as though articulating, inaudibly, the same monotone. Then he repeated: "very, very reasonable."

There, he paused to loosen the scarf and let out a cloud of vapour. It seemed to be difficult for him to breathe.

"But what if I order you both to shoot yourselves? What if I order you to shoot that girl with strange hair? Would you, Bell, kill her to save the little Rucastle viper?"

He suddenly aimed his gun at the Doctor, the visible part of his face distorted with a glaring intensity that looked like anger.

"Answer me!" he shrieked, shaking Heather. His whole body was trembling shallowly but distinctly, and the metal of his revolver jingled against his cufflinks. The sound was high and sharp, like that of a knife taken out of its sheath, and my very nerves seemed to tingle with it. "Would you shoot her?"

"It would save no one," said Bell. "You would murder her all the same, of course."

Cream nodded, seemingly pleased.

"Yes, yes," he said. "That's correct. I'd murder her. You're right."

In his agitation, he made two or three steps towards us and into the deep snow under the trees instead of remaining on the very edge of the river slope. The Doctor had noticed that fact a second sooner than I, and threw himself at Cream, knocking the revolver out of his hand. A shot rang out as Cream withdrew with unnatural agility, having let go of the child; I took a glance at Bell to reassure myself that both he and Heather were unharmed, and then rushed forward, seeing nothing but the black figure that was stumbling over the snowdrifts in front of me.

He had the advantage of being taller and possessing a natural capacity for speed, which under other circumstances would have put me well behind him. To my great satisfaction, I noticed, however, that he was limping, limping badly, and that the mere action of running hurt him. I thanked Heaven for Bell's unfaltering hand. While I jumped over the particularly big lumps of snow and grass with ease, he would go around them, shortening the distance between us, or, better still, stumble. At this rate he'd be wearied out before he was able to reach safety; that, or I’d get a chance to shoot him.

As it was, I had not yet risked a shot. There was only one revolver in my pocket, and, though I did have some spare bullets, I knew I’d have little time to use them. The seconds I’d spend on that could prove to be crucial. Besides, the distance between us was still too great; in that darkness, I could well miss.

We were running along the river shore, though we had already entered the clearance between the alder grove and the deeper forest that lay ahead. After some twenty strides Cream turned to the left, towards the Rucastles. At the sight of them he seemed to find his second wind. In despair I threw the revolver up and fired aimlessly; the next moment I knew I failed to cause him any harm. He stood behind the small old lady who, I assumed, was the American relative, holding her by the shoulders.

On my left, Miss Hunter uttered a cry, and I stopped. My breathing was ragged.

I instantly took in Jephro Rucastle and his tall ruddy wife. He held in his hands something that looked like a piece of thick, soft fabric to which darkness gave a faint cherry hue: I realized it must have been one of the plaits, either Miss Hunter’s or Alice’s. Upon seeing Cream he dropped it to the snow and turned to me, a gun in his hand; for a moment I thought it would be the end of me, but no shot followed.

“What are you waiting for?” Cream cried in a high-strung voice. Rucastle could not find his words, only gesturing nervously with both hands as a way of explanation. Extraordinarily, Cream's mere presence seemed to be driving him mad with fear, and I noticed how his every movement sent rippling waves of reflections bouncing through the candle-lit corridor that was the mirror behind his back.

Then I heard a short unnatural laugh from Miss Hunter.

“There are no bullets,” she said, with a kind of hysterical excitement. She was deathly pale, to the point where her cheeks seemed bluish to me.

I dared not shoot again. Cream was all but using the old lady to shield himself from me.

“But you!” cried Miss Hunter, turning to him, “you are the one they are after! So you are no fiancé of Alice’s!”

“Shut up,” here he used a rude word, “or else I’ll slaughter you all, ungrateful scum, the way I’d slaughtered Arthur’s beloved Elsbeth-“ his voice assumed an unnatural strained quality, something that sounded to me almost like lust, a sweet whimper of aspiration. “Arthur and Elsbeth, they are like Adam and Eve, entering Heaven together. But then she sinned, and for that they’d both fallen. The sinful, filthy, disgusting Eve! I killed her. I drove a knife into her throat, the same knife I used to murder Jonathan Smith, and Jezebel Breck, the same knife I’ll use to murder you, Doyle.”

A haze of red clouded my vision. I barely knew what I was doing; but by a mad chance, a chance that saved the life of the old lady and indeed our whole cause, the Doctor, who had caught up with us despite carrying Heather Rucastle, chose that moment to grab Rucastle’s walking stick and strike at Cream’s arm, hitting the radial nerve. Cream’s fingers released the knife and hung, useless. I seemed to hear him scream in fury before taking off away from the Rucastles and towards the forest. There was, I knew, no way for him to escape his fate now, and it sent feverish warmth through my body.

 

At one point I stumbled and fell, only to find, when I jumped back to my feet, both Bell and Violet Hunter standing in Cream’s way. Bell had apparently left his coat on the shore, because he had nothing but his shirt and his waistcoat on; now he produced his revolver and would have undoubtedly shot Cream but for Miss Hunter’s interference. She stepped between Cream and the Doctor and attempted, it seemed, to pacify the latter, only to have Cream jump at her and throw her with violent force towards the precipice.

Though I hardly had any time to observe the developments, I felt my breath catch in my throat at the sight of her going over the cliff, more so when the Doctor jumped after her with not a tinge of hesitation. A fall into that river could well kill them both, there being half a mile between the house and the river and with the temperature of the air below thirty. I then failed to remember that there still remained the Rucastles and the American, whom Bell would have to deal with should he be successful in saving Miss Hunter from drowning.

As it was, I was relieved to see a moment later, when that part of the shore came into my sight, that the Doctor managed to catch up with Miss Hunter and seize hold of her hands so as to effectively prevent her from sliding into the water. She lay on the snow, limp, apparently having lost consciousness but otherwise quite unhurt, and Bell was kneeling beside her, absorbed in the process of resuscitation. A moment later I had left them behind.

This incident allowed Cream to gain on me, and it was to my alarm that he managed to cross the clearance and enter the forest. I picked up speed, too, and soon was close on his heels, but to shoot him there would have been a hopeless venture. Thankfully, the trees had soon grown shorter and more scarce, which made me realize that we had gone through the forested part of the grounds and entered what even in winter could only be called a swamp – the ice on the surface did nothing to thicken the mud which the place was so full of. It became more difficult for me to run; for Cream, however, it was nearly impossible. More importantly, he was now clearly visible against the grey monotony of the landscape.

I lifted the revolver and took aim.

At that moment, he stumbled. My shot had gone over his head. He now lay on the ground, his arms spread wide. It was not pretence; he must have been exhausted by now, and certainly he did not anticipate the swamp, having instead expected to lose me in the forest.

I do not know why I did not shoot him then. I imagine that, acting on pure instinct as I was, I simply settled for the customary course of action – a man who fell was to be trussed and handed to the police (or else, to the Doctor), not killed in cold blood.

Or perhaps I simply wished to see his face before I rid the world of him once and for all, fulfilling the task at which Bell had once failed, nearly sacrificing his own life for the purpose.

I walked closer to him and sat on my heels. His scarf had come loose and slid to one side, allowing the starlight to outline his features; and they were horrible. More horrible than I had dreamt, even. For not only was his outward appearance distorted and his cheeks stripped of skin, but it seemed that the very shape of his bones had undergone a macabre change, that his muscles had melted and could now form wild, inhuman expressions one would never see in a sane man. The semblance of peacefulness that was now written on his face looked to me worse than any grimace; the thinness of his lips and his cheeks allowed them to slide down a little, like a poorly fastened piece of fabric on some slippery surface, and they hung limply, distorting his face into a mask that lacked emotion of any kind. It was also smooth, unnaturally so, like well-polished leather.

Somebody’s steps echoed over the swamp. He was walking fast, crushing the ice under his boots with each firm step. A faint spot of pink light fell onto Cream’s cheek.

“Put the gun down,” he said. I did not react.

“Doyle, do you hear me? Put the gun down,” and there was such steel in that intonation that I could not think of disobeying. I dropped the revolver in the mud and relapsed into immobility again.

“Miss Hunter?” I asked quietly.

“Safe.”

“Others?”

“Safe,” he repeated, and put the lantern onto the ground to approach me and briefly lay a hand on my shoulder before turning his attention to Cream, who now started to give some sign of life. This worried me; I groped the ground for the revolver, but Bell quickly picked it up and hid it in his trouser pocket. He was as undressed as he'd been on the shore, and I saw that his hands were unsteady with cold.

He must have gone to the house with the Rucastles, I thought – because he now had a lantern, but also because he produced a piece of rope and set about tying Cream’s arms and legs together in a series of quick, efficient knots. After that, he plugged Cream’s mouth with his own handkerchief (I wondered why ever he’d have done that, but failed to voice the question); at this point Cream was almost fully awake, and his expression began to change. The changes meant little to me. I could not capture any familiar emotion in these spasms – and just as well, I suppose, because I’ve no doubt I would have killed him for smiling that smile I could never help remembering.

The Doctor took out his revolver and aimed it at Cream. Cream’s eyes came to a halt; apart from that, there was no hint that he either perceived the danger or feared it. Bell moved his head slightly, indicating, I understood, that Cream should stand up. The knots were loose enough for him to do so, though not loose enough to run or take any action against us; as always, the Doctor proved that he knew what he was doing no matter the conditions.

But it occurred to me again that he must have been very cold, and so I took my own coat off and wrapped it around his shoulders. He did not protest, and nor did he pay any more heed to our surroundings, Neill’s back being the sole focus of his attention.

After a while, it pleased me to observe that Bell’s incessant shivering had nearly subsided. I looked at him, at his fingers on the trigger, and wondered how he could hold Neill at gunpoint and not fire.

 

As I remember it, it was not long before we reached the house. Although of course I might be mistaken – then, I hardly noticed if any time had passed at all – I know it was a quarter past ten when the entrance door of the Copper Beeches opened before us to reveal the clock hanging above the main gallery. A quiet hiss of a dozen or so gas lamps hung in the air.

Miss Violet Hunter sat on the writing desk across the hall, holding a pistol in her hand and Heather Rucastle on her lap. The child was wrapped in what I recognized as the Doctor’s coat. She was no longer asleep, and she turned her head to look at us, her eyes wide and glassy. It was the first time I saw her features clearly; and there was something so striking in her round face that I nearly flinched away, though at the time I did not recognize what it was that had affected me.

“Hello, Heather,” I said helplessly, and shivered upon hearing my voice echo around the hall. She did not answer me.

“Dr. Bell! Dr. Doyle!” cried Miss Hunter, pulling the child closer. “Oh, and-“ though she stopped short at the sight of Cream, his appearance, it seemed, shocked her not. She must have seen him before- and the Doctor trusted her, otherwise he would not have left her in the house like this; but I was at a loss to explain her earlier behaviour to myself.

The Doctor motioned for Cream to sit down onto the floor. After a moment’s silence, Cream obeyed. I did not like the way he behaved, his mute resignation, his smooth movements. They all smelt of danger to me, and there began to stir in my chest that worry again, that urge to take him by the throat and squeeze until his body was immobile.

There was a small noise at that moment, a sound not unlike a moan. Only now did I notice that we were not alone in the house; the Rucastles sat on the floor, too, in the cold draught I could feel touching my ankles. It was at them that Miss Hunter was pointing her derringer.

“Did you talk to Mrs. Fogerty?” asked the Doctor.

Miss Hunter nodded.

“I did, Doctor. She has agreed to render you any assistance you’d require.”

“But what does she have to offer?”

“A letter, apparently,” she said.

“A letter?” he seemed to halt a little. She gave a thin bleak smile.

“Oh, yes. Alice’s. In the end, Mrs. Fogerty says, Alice knew of Cream’s identity and had told him as much. She had told him she’d written the letter and gave it to someone she knew; but he did not believe her, not until she was dead and Mrs. Fogerty informed the Rucastles about the incident.”

Bell was silent.

“And Mr. Rucastle here promises to testify,” added Miss Hunter.

“Good.”                                       

For a moment the Doctor stood, his gaze wandering but never quite leaving the motionless figure crouched on the floor.

“Now, Miss Hunter,” he said slowly, “Please go and fetch the police. I would spare you this task, but I am afraid I cannot leave you in the same house with our captive. As to Heather, I suggest that you entrust her to Mrs. Fogerty’s care; she’d better sleep now.”

Miss Hunter stood up, Heather still in her arms, and threw the derringer to the Doctor. He caught it, immediately pointing it at the Rucastles. I could now see the reason for their strange ineloquence – they, too, had pieces of cloth stopping their mouths. Apparently Miss Hunter found the possibility of them speaking as unnerving as we, the possibility of hearing Cream’s voice.

“Up you go,” said Bell, now addressing Cream and the Rucastles. “To the cellar.”

They followed his instructions with some awkwardness, for their limbs must have gone quite numb. We escorted them into the small dark room with a low ceiling; there, he ordered them to sit down again, now onto the straw, produced some more rope, and tied them all immobile. Then he fastened Cream’s knots. I walked behind him like a shadow, uncertain if he wished for me to do anything; he never indicated as much.

“Doyle, bring the lantern, please,” said he. When I returned, he was sitting on one of the wine barrels that stood there, directly opposite of Neill, his elbow leant against his knee and his revolver pointed at the centre of Cream’s forehead. In the faint orange light he looked so sombre that for a moment I felt what I can only describe as hope that he’d end that game and shoot Cream, shoot him now. It was, of course, all but an illusion. He’d had no intention of doing that.

Instead, to my alarm and astonishment, he drew himself forward and untied Cream’s handkerchief with one hand.

“Sorry about that, Doyle,” he murmured absently. I walked closer and stood beside him. Cream’s face seemed even thinner now, dreadful red scars lining his cheekbones and his brows. His eyes were big, and they glimmered with a hollow gleam.

After a while, he gave a small bubbling sound not unlike laughter; I could barely prevent myself from reacting.

“Do you think I’ll talk, Bell?” he asked, his voice hoarse from the dryness that must have been hurting his mouth by now. “I know you want me to talk; you’re like a hawk, looking for these minute details I can reveal to you unwittingly. I shan’t tell you a word.”

“It does not matter now,” said the Doctor listlessly. “You are doomed.”

“But so are you,” said Cream, with a sudden joyous sharpness to his voice. “So are you, and your precious Doyle! You’ll hang with me, and you know it very well! Is it that knowledge that makes your face look so desperate now? Or is it the memory of the poor Charlotte who was so anxious for somebody to help her, to show her just a little kindness, but got her head chopped off instead?”

His words were unbearable to me. Not because he talked of Charlotte Jefford, not even because what he was saying was so much like my own bitter reproach to the Doctor that evening before the struggle on the cliff, but because I understood what he meant, what he was so glad of.

“Doctor, give me the gun,” I said in a strained voice. Bell did not turn to me, but I saw his shoulders tense.

“No,” he said shortly. I felt a sudden touch of anger. To kill Cream was a necessity; I wanted to do it the way a man wants to remove his palm from the heat of burning fire, or to shrink away from a deadly blow. The Doctor stood between me and the opportunity to alleviate that unending ache, and it was clear to me that I had to remove him, but I did not know how. I could not deceive him. I could not force him – he was still, I suspected, stronger than me, and had more skill in hand-to-hand fight.

“See,” commented Neill amiably, “Bell here is intent on protecting me. I knew he would, that’s why I never feared any of your vows and threats.”

There was only so much I was able to do to stop myself from attacking him, desperately, in an attempt to finish him off before the Doctor got to me. At that moment, Bell’s eyes flickered at me briefly; I saw his expression change to that of extreme anxiety. Quickly he returned the handkerchief in its place so as to prevent further talking on Cream’s part, jumped to his feet and dragged me towards the door. I began to struggle, though at first it was an automatic reaction rather than a conscious one, and of course I could not overcome him; there was, besides, that wiry steeliness to his grip that made his movements so precise and so forceful it was hardly possible to resist him.

He slammed the door shut, produced a key and turned it twice in the keyhole. Then he stood between me and the cellar, his arms folded on his chest. He looked more sombre still, but also more unyielding, and I knew I would hardly persuade him, not when he was in this state.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bell,” I told him. “Give me the key and the revolver.”

“No,” he repeated. “I cannot let you do that.”

Very well, I thought. If I could not win that argument with the strength of my conviction alone, maybe I could reason with him.

“Why not?” I asked, urging myself to remain patient.

“We have evidence against him,” the Doctor replied at once. “He shall be tried and hanged. I cannot let you murder him, Doyle.”

“Did you not hear him?” I cried. “Or perhaps you’ve forgotten the case of Eugene Chantrelle, forgotten how your mere name enabled him to compromise you in a most awful way?”

The Doctor frowned, his lips thinning in a deliberate smile of cold sarcasm.

“You do not think that I would have _murdered_ Chantrelle, surely,” he said, “had I known what he’d do?”

“But Cream knows so much more than our names! You cannot possibly wish him to speak-“

“No and I do not,” he answered, his pretence of indifference disappearing. I could see feeling in his eyes, powerful and intense. “I have not a scrap of sympathy for him, Doyle, I hope you do not doubt that? And it is not that I consider murdering him unacceptable; you know I would have done so before.”

“What is it, then?” exclaimed I, moving closer to him.

“It is not going to make anything better,” said the Doctor. “It is a useless action that shall bring nothing to you but a death sentence.”

“It is the only right thing to do,” I insisted. “I care not if I shall hang for it. And surely, Doctor, you could make it look like self-defence if you wished?”

His eyes clouded at these words, and he frowned deeply as though preparing to retort the insolent suggestion, but somehow his own tongue would not obey him. The restless movement of his fingers against his forearm did not, however, bespeak perplexity; rather, I knew, he was anxious to make me understand something and did not quite know how to word it convincingly enough.

"I could," he said at last. "But listen to me, Doyle; listen to me just this once, and I swear solemnly I will never ask anything of you again. Abandon the thought of killing Cream. You think it shall right the wrongs, somehow - alas, it shall not. What it shall do is make you miserable, make you suffer; you cannot murder and then live as though nothing has happened, for it is only Neill and the likes of him who can do that."

He spoke quickly, forcefully now, an unhappy curve to his broad mouth. I confess that monologue had rather stricken me; though I was as sure of my actions as ever, my frustration with him began slowly to disappear.

"He is not a human being, Bell," I said. "He's an exception."

"Your heart knows no exceptions. His nature matters not. You can deceive me, I believe that; I can save you from being hanged; but you'll never save yourself from the unending sickness of the soul that is murder."

I did not like how true his words rang to that deeper part of myself that was the source of my restlessness. I wished to say, _no, I will kill him and feel nothing_ , but I couldn’t; it would be a lie. And I did not have it in me to lie to Bell.

“But, but-“ I floundered, “is it possible that you’ll let him tell the police whatever he chooses to, and say his last words in the presence of somebody other than ourselves?”

His features softened a little, and he cupped his chin in his hand in momentary contemplation before hiding his hands in his pockets and fixing his gaze on me. Though I knew by now he would not relent, it was clear that my fearfulness had stricken a chord in him.

“You must understand, Doyle,” he said, carefully weighing his words. “That I do not and cannot reassure you that he will cause us no further harm. You may well be correct in assuming that he will try to compromise us by using his knowledge of our lives; that he will, like Chantrelle before him, use his very right to speak before his execution to bring misery upon us. And yet I am convinced that he ought not to be killed. I am not to be persuaded otherwise.”

There was little to be said to that. I believe I replied that I knew it, however unjustified his stance might seem to me. This response, even being a clear sign of my defeat, incited in the Doctor an odd air of sadness; but he nodded tersely and straightened himself.

"If you should hate me for that, do," said he. "But you are not a murderer and shall not become one, not as long as I can help it."

With that, he slackened against the wall and slid onto the floor. I stepped back, alarmed for a moment that he was unwell; but he merely stretched his long legs across the corridor and began calmly to clean my revolver, having put his beside him. Then he raised his head a little and looked at me with an unmoving stare.

"Now, promise that you will not attempt to kill him," he said in a low voice. "Please promise me that."

I could barely believe I succumbed to his urging, but I nodded in an answer to that request, and then again, unsure if he'd understood that the slight movement of my head was meant to be a sign of agreement.

"You have my word," I said, to reassure him further. He then offered me the revolver, which in my confusion I very nearly dropped; and he seemed to smile a little as though my awkwardness were a relief to him.

"Good. Now pray go and calm Mrs. Fogerty down. I imagine she must be quite distraught, and surely it cannot be good for Heather's state of mind."

And I know it might not sound right, or even sane, but that night I felt more loneliness and more despair than I had experienced at Abbey Mill or after the death of Miss Jefford. I had no solace to my torment, and no one to wish and hope for the same outcome I wished and hoped for. Once again I had a reason to grieve for Louise’s death; for she had left me truly alone, abandoned me in the darkness of my own mind where no sound ever reaches and no ice ever melts.


	10. Grace of Alice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Canadian/American confusion is canon *shrugs shoulders* Doyle calls Cream a "smiling, mischievous American, my fellow lover of Poe". He probably meant "American" as in "from North America", though.

 However little formal right Miss Hunter had for extending to us an invitation to spend the rest of the night in the house, we judged it sensible to agree. There was no chance to get to Crewe at such an ungodly hour. And besides, I was in no condition to go anywhere. If I have said ‘we’ when speaking of myself and the Doctor, this was merely to signify the fact that I was present and that I did not raise any objections to his reasoning; for in truth all I wished was to sleep for as long as I could. If it were possible, I would have undoubtedly chosen to never awake at all.

It was in a sour mood that we had risen the next morning and gathered in the drawing room for breakfast. Even the ever cheerful Miss Hunter wore a pale absent smile that suggested a degree of distress. As to Bell, he seemed to be deep in thought, but it was by no means his usual working reverie. The way he looked right through us even when greeting us and replying to Miss Hunter's casual questions told me that the subject of his contemplation was neither pleasant nor exciting.

In retrospect, I imagine he must have been at a loss as to how to behave around me. Under any other circumstances of a similar kind he would attempt to console me, to stay with me for as long as he could; but that was when he was sure that his presence would reflect beneficially on my welfare. Now, he himself appeared to be both the source and the cause of my melancholy, and I've no doubt it must have been unsettling him. But then I thought nothing it, having attributed his apparent discomfort mostly to the ambiguity of the Rucastles' fate.

"I ought to apologize to you both," said Miss Hunter, her voice tight. "I broke the promise I gave to you, and in a most foolish manner, too."

"You are not to blame, Miss Hunter," objected the Doctor quickly. He spoke with a very matter-of-fact air, and I saw that he merely stated what was to him obvious rather than trying to justify her actions. I think she had realized that, as well, because she lifted her gaze at him, and her eyes brightened with grateful surprise. "Nobody's to blame. I could not tell you the details for the very reason you have attempted to interfere with our plan; he's the devil himself, he could deceive you regardless. And you could not remain idle, of course, not when you believed that we were about to commit a fatal mistake."

I gave him a wordless questioning look which I am not entirely sure he registered. He was tinkling his spoon in an unvaryingly regular, cheerless tune, even though there was quite obviously no sugar left in his cup to dissolve.

"It is important to understand," Bell continued, "the fundamental difference between our view of the case and that of Miss Hunter here. What did we see? Cream came to Crewe in order to set up another elaborate case we would not be able to solve, to commit murders we would not be able to prevent. It was partially for this purpose, and partially because of the unusual character of the late Alice Rucastle, that they had engaged to be married some year ago. Jephro Rucastle, the wretched soul, used this circumstance to ask Cream for money, thus effectively sentencing himself to death."

"I can only theorize as to what kind of fate Cream planned for Alice; perhaps he wished to use her, or, more likely, he had intended to murder her from the very beginning. This way or the other, the girl had discovered his secret. A prudent lass as she was, she recorded all her fears and suspicions, as well as the hard facts she became aware of, and gave these notes to the only person she trusted - Mrs. Jean Fogerty. With that, assured of her safety, she confronted Cream."

"But he had always underestimated people, always thought less of them than they deserved. I had never seen him judge a person correctly; for a smart man, he had strikingly little ability to learn. That was what allowed Doyle and myself to defeat him time after time. Cream had misjudged Doyle, thinking that he would not have the strength to escape captivity, seek me out, and convince me of the truth of his story; he misjudged poor Jefford; Bulweather; finally, he misjudged Alice Rucastle, and this last mistake was to be the cause of his downfall."

"He did not believe the story of the letter and imagined she was bluffing. Nonetheless he was alarmed to such an extent that he had thought it better to kill her right away. Intending, I imagine, to flee the town after her death, he demanded that Rucastle repay the debt. But initially Rucastle refused to comply."

"It was then that the idea had occurred to Cream to use Alice's death as a tool of intimidation. To show the Rucastles what he was capable of, he murdered their daughter and hid her body in the well on the grounds of the estate rather than throwing it into the river where it would never be found. Perhaps he even threatened to blame the murder on the Rucastle family. Rucastle, frightened beyond description, agreed to return the money to Cream and even started doing so, only to be informed by Mrs. Fogerty that she would report Alice's murder to the police."

"Imagine Cream's reaction to this news! Mrs. Fogerty has to be removed, but, unlike Jefford, she can be neither tortured nor killed. Knowing Mrs. Fogerty to be superstitious, he starts looking for some powerful tool of coercion that would help to silence her. Luck is on his side: he stumbles across a description of the Rucastle family ritual - whether it was a forgery or a genuine manuscript is of no consequence now - which presents him with a most convenient solution.”

"This is what we saw unfolding gradually before our eyes," he said after some pause. "To us, it was all but a logically structured narrative. Think, however, as to what it must have looked like from Miss Hunter's point of view. She is aware of some parts of the story but not of others; thus, she knows that Cream is what I have vaguely called a 'dangerous criminal', but she has not the foggiest as to the nature of his crimes. He could be an American train robber for all she knows.

It is true that I have mentioned in passing that money might have had something to do with Cream's motives. At the same time, I have never told Miss Hunter just what exactly my hypothesis was; and nor did either of us share with her the discoveries we'd made of Cream's alias and his other murders. Dr. Doyle's findings in regard to Cream's relationship with Alice Rucastle have, too, remained secret.

More importantly still, Miss Hunter knew nothing of what Cream was supposed to look like. Had it not been so, she would have never succumbed to his deceit."

The Doctor fell silent, his hand with the spoon slowly coming to a standstill. For a moment I had imagined that he would say nothing more, leaving his explanation of what had transpired unfinished; then he shifted his gaze to Miss Hunter, and there appeared on his face a curious expression of bemusement.

"What she knew was that two men whom she had had no prior familiarity with told her of a criminal with a taste for bizarre and that, according to these very same men, the whole affair might have had something to do with money. I think we’ll all agree that it is not much to go on... And certainly not enough to inspire any kind of solid trust. To be sure, she felt regard for me because she is a friend of an unfortunate girl I once helped; and she liked Dr. Doyle, who struck her as a kind and honest man. So, seeing no immediate malice in our plan, she agreed to help. I have had many chances, however, to observe that it takes more than a fleeting feeling of sympathy and a one-time demonstration of one’s professional capabilities to impress somebody who is both impulsive and independent-minded.” Here, he offered me a weak smile in which I seemed to discern a hint of warmth. “Miss Hunter started to form her own views of the problem. Is it not true, Miss Hunter?”

“You are correct in every regard,” responded Miss Hunter, looking away. “When you told me that there was financial blackmail involved, I immediately dismissed the possibility that it was from Mrs. Fogerty that the Rucastles wished to extort money. From what I’d heard of her, she appeared to be rather poor. And so I asked myself over and over who the other victim was, and why you never indicated his existence to me.” She smiled rather forcedly. “I ought to have understood, of course, that there was no need to introduce any other figure. It seems such an elementary idea now that the Rucastles might have been the victims as well as the offenders!”

Then she turned to face Bell, her voice rising to the point of brittle.

"But oh, how could I not believe him when he came to me and told me that he was Alice's fiance? How could I?"

The Doctor dropped his spoon and leant forward, seemingly shaken out of his lethargy by her cries that sounded so much like pleas.

"Do not even think of it this way, my dear Miss Hunter," he said kindly. "Ultimately, no harm was done. More than that - you did us a great service by agreeing to stay, one I fear I may not be able to repay. Not many would have done what you did."

Silence reigned.

"I would have gone to you," she said at length. "Only it was too late. I couldn't have possibly managed to be in the grove on time."

"What did he tell you?" asked Bell, with more softness still. I saw that she began to calm down, the way a child does when told not to fear. This effect was well familiar to me; sometimes I thought that the Doctor must have been very good at lulling people to sleep, though the only occasion on which I had seen him do that was with Innes, back in London.

London! It seemed so far away now! To think that it was only a week that had passed felt ridiculous. In my mind, it was years. I scarcely remembered the familiar scents, the cobbles of its roads, the kind of flowers its flower girls would sell. Somehow, I was sure that I'd return to a different London, a city I had never known before existed.

"He told me he didn't wish for the police to interfere," replied Miss Hunter. "He feared Mrs. Fogerty would be implicated."

"Ah, Mrs. Fogerty!" cried the Doctor, "The American accent! And no doubt he said that he was her son?"

"So he did," said she. "But what convinced me, Doctor, was that the accents were indeed the same. Not just American - they spoke as if they were from the same city, though his speech was of course smoother than hers, and with a faint Scottish flair. I have some knowledge of American accents; both were undoubtedly from Quebec."

“It just so happens that Cream is Canadian,” said the Doctor ruefully. “Although I doubt it would have made any difference if he were from any other place. He would have found his way around that difficulty.”

“But at least discovering the ritual was merely his luck,” Miss Hunter replied. “If not for that, he would have been arrested the instance Jean Fogerty went to the police.”

Bell pinched the bridge of his nose, thoughtful.

“Possibly,” he said. “Yes, that ritual... A crude thing. I estimate it as having originated circa sixteenth century, purely on the basis of the fact that it involves summoning the last deceased woman in the family. A little too liberal-minded for the Middle Ages. For the Age of Enlightenment it would be too backward; I cannot say with certainty, however, that it did not emerge _after_ that – in the beginning of our century, perhaps. We do seem to be descending into backwardness anew, in some regards at least.” He smiled a dry smile. “The whole notion of asking a spectre for advice speaks in favour of this theory. Traditionally, ghosts were not to be played with; one either asked for something significant or did not bother the dead at all. And the plaits? A personal possession, something that could hardly be kept in the house after one’s death. Genuine rituals of this sort would usually employ something that could, if with difficulty, be procured by anyone. Blood. Animal flesh. Honey, perhaps, but this is more characteristic of Greece.”

I could not possibly say what that unexpected excursus into history was prompted by. Perhaps such was his way of distracting himself from the unpleasant issues at hand; or it could be that he wished to console us by reminding us what normalcy was like. Perhaps he did not like how I quiet I was throughout his entire monologue (for I had not uttered a word).

But I became aware now that he was no longer absorbed in thought. Indeed he snapped his cufflinks into place and rose, bowing slightly to Miss Hunter.

“We ought to go,” he said. “I trust that no further danger awaits you in quite such a way as it did this time, Miss Hunter, but I cannot help but be worried as to your wellbeing. You have lost your last source of income; if you’ve no money now, your situation is surely a desperate one.”

“It is very kind of you to inquire about this,” she answered, visibly touched. “But have no fear. The Rucastles paid me so generously that I have some savings by now. I suppose I could go to London and seek employment elsewhere.

"There is, however, one thing that causes me considerable anxiety,” continued she, “and it is the fate of my poor little Heather. What is to become of her now? Do you think the Rucastles shall be imprisoned?”

“Surely we could talk to Mrs. Fogerty about the matter,” I said. Bell positively jumped at the sound of my voice. “Perhaps she’ll agree to take the child to herself. If she has any relatives, it is better still; Heather shan’t be alone after Mrs. Fogerty’s death.”

“Dr. Doyle is absolutely right,” said the Doctor after some pause. “We’ll talk to Jean Fogerty. As to your former employers, I do rather doubt that they shall be released in the foreseeable future, what with their confessions and the multiple witnesses of their crimes. Unless some unexpected development occurs, Mrs. Fogerty’s testimony shall permit to charge them with perverting the course of justice by intimidating a witness."

"Nonetheless, ‘not in the foreseeable future’ does not mean ‘never’. No doubt the court will not be hard on the Rucastles; most likely, they’ll claim to have been intimidated themselves, which shall not be altogether untrue.”

He walked towards Miss Hunter and all but took her hands in his in an evident attempt to communicate to her some confidence.

“Trust me, Miss Hunter,” said he. “I won’t abandon Heather. At least I’ll do what I can to improve her situation.”

 

It was clear to me that he knew something about the affair that he intended to use for his own purposes – otherwise he would have never made such a promise. It did not worry me too badly, however. Nothing could make the matters worse, and, whatever revelations awaited me, surely they could not measure up to my failed attempt to murder Cream.

As Bell was still without a hat, Miss Hunter had lent him one of Rucastle’s spare ones (and by “lent” I mean to say that she ran up to him when he was crossing the doorstep and all but put the hat on his head, for Bell seemed to be paying no mind to such trifles). It was a little too big for him, and there was something of a sulky child in the way he looked when pushing it back to prevent it from sliding over his eyes.

“Should do for now,” he shrugged. “We ought to go to the station; the matter brooks no delay.”

“But what is it that is so urgent?” inquired I. It seemed to me that, as an endeavour to find proof of Cream’s guilt, the case was over and done with.

“Rucastle and I have a business to settle. It... concerns you, too, Doyle.”

The odd notion occurred to me then that it might have something to do with Heather Rucastle and the Doctor’s promise to Miss Hunter. But I did not know why I drew that connection – it was as if the thought were not entirely my own.

 

The local police station was, undoubtedly, a most satisfying sight for any professional to behold. Contrary to what one might have expected to see so far from the capital, the custody suite was in perfect order. There even was a medical room of a remarkable degree of cleanliness; Bell seemed to be slightly cheered up by that. He proceeded to ask the room officer if the condemned of the Crewe prison were held in solitary confinement and nodded with satisfaction upon receiving an affirmative answer. It was at that time that the custom of forcing the condemned to spend their last days in the common prison was beginning to fade away; which was, of course, a great improvement, especially if one considered the fact that not twenty years ago there had been such barbarian practices as quartering and public executions.

The Doctor then inquired as to the treatment of Cream and the Rucastles. The room officer informed us that, though both Jephro Rucastle and his wife were still detained at the station, the man to whom everyone referred as Dr. Baumann was transferred to the local prison the previous night and awaited transportation to London. Bell showed no sign of surprise at this highly unusual decision. I suspected that he was aware of it prior to our coming there, though it was unclear through what means; he might have had some influence on the Crewe commissioner, but no kind of legal authority. The only solution I saw was that that night the Doctor had somehow convinced Inspector Moore, the man who conducted the Copper Beeches arrest, of Cream’s connection to other murders, a theory that, at the time, sounded to me nothing short of fantastic.

After some debate, we were granted permission to speak to Rucastle. He sat on the bench in his cell, frowning his bulky eyebrows, and upon hearing us enter offered Bell an exceptionally hostile look.

“What on earth do you want with me?” he asked. “You know very well neither I nor my wife is to be held accountable for the crimes of this madman.”

“No,” said the Doctor dryly. “That is not what I wish to speak with you about.”

“You may well wish for this conversation to progress in this or that manner you desire; but do not expect any such willingness from _me_.”

“O I am sure you’ll find the topic interesting,” parried Bell. Rucastle thinned his lips, looking at me with equal bleakness.

“Doyle,” he said, a degree of disgusted astonishment in his voice. “Cunning devil! You surprised me yesterday.”

Of course he said no more; he was not so stupid as to confess to attempting to kill me. So long as there was no murder attempt amongst the charges, he was good, and, my desire to change that fact notwithstanding, it seemed such was the way it would remain.

But on the Doctor his words had a remarkable effect. He made a couple of steps forward, and somehow even the fact that he was limping heavily (all the running and walking without his cane having wearied him out) worked to the effect of giving him a distinctly menacing air. His eyes narrowed, and he gripped the wall as though he were about to tear one of its bricks out.

“Rucastle,” he said, his voice growing dangerously low, “your sentence is yet to be decided upon. And, unless you behave respectfully, I swear I’ll do everything in my power for it to be as harsh as the law permits.”

I was not astonished to see uneasiness in his opponent's features; I know I would have been frightened had this anger been directed at me. Rucastle had nearly recoiled, and his hands flew up in an instinctive gesture of defence.

“No need to get so excited, Doctor,” murmured he, but I saw that his aim was to protect the remnants of his dignity rather than to appear contrary.

“Right,” said Bell, and drew back with deliberate slowness of movement. For a moment, he simply stood there, contemplating the clean rough walls and the small window just below the ceiling.

“So, tell me,” he uttered finally, returning his piercing gaze to Rucastle, “how did your daughter die?”

At these words over Rucastle’s face there came a horrible change; he looked at Bell in such a way that one might’ve thought the Doctor came to sneer and jibe at Alice’s very remains. I am not sure if a more striking reaction could have been evoked in him if Bell started reciting the monologue of Hamlet to the poor girl’s skull. I of course knew not what mysterious communication had occurred between them; but I think now that even then, I must have started to connect the dots. For there was a coldness in my heart that was not provoked by the thought of Cream.

“You know how she died,” Rucastle said. “You discovered her body yourself. She was poisoned by Baumann, or whatever his real name is.”

“I know how _she_ died, yes,” replied the Doctor. “But I am not speaking of her; it is your real daughter I wish to inquire about.”

“I do not follow.”

“Do not test my patience!” There was a brilliant menacing gleam to his eyes; then he went on in a much quieter manner that seemed to me far more sinister.

“You might or might not have heard of the Coatley case," Bell said. "Some fifteen years ago, Ian Coatley was charged with brutally murdering the parents of a young girl from Southsea, a Miss Heather Grace. The girl herself appeared to have fled the house, luckily unharmed; Coatley was captured and sentenced to death."

"He sent her letters from prison – letters everyone thought were horrible writings of a madman.  But in due time, he was hanged, and thus the sad story seemed to come to an end.”

“In truth, however, Ian Coatley was innocent,” he continued with grimness. “And he died not for his deeds, of which none were so despicable as to earn him a death sentence, but for his love towards Miss Grace. It was she who killed the Grace couple; and yet she walked free, whilst Coatley’s very name was subject to contempt and hatred for many years to come.”

“I could not prove it. I have thought I would never see her again – and I was correct, in some sense: I was to never see her _alive_.”

Bell’s eyes widened slightly.

“Somebody, I neither know nor care how, had discovered her secret; had realized that she was behind the murders of her parents, that Ian Coatley never harmed a soul in his life. And so she was forced to seek protection. She offered you a deal – for you to hide her in exchange for that or other kind of domestic work, or perhaps in exchange for money – and you agreed, because you are a greedy man, Rucastle, greedy to the point of harbouring a murder suspect for the sake of profit. It was obvious to me that you were capable of it; why, the only event that managed to make you repay your debt to Dr. Cream was his killing Miss Grace and stuffing her body into your well Edgar Poe-style.  This is some remarkable lack of desire for self-preservation.”

“You are the devil,” cried Rucastle. “You are Satan himself! How you learnt of all that is beyond me; but I know, Bell, that it was not through honest means. I will not-“

“My means are none of your concern,” said the Doctor icily. “Think me a sorcerer or a charlatan, if you wish, for it is of no consequence to me. You will, however, testify that the body in the well was not that of your daughter.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You will do so if you at all value your pathetic life. I may cause you no harm, but Dr. Cream will undoubtedly wish to drag you to the gallows; the more evidence there is against you, the more likely he is to succeed. And you know very well how much difference it shall make whether she was your own daughter or merely a stranger whose presence in your house was a convenience to you both.”

There was undeniable truth in his words which Rucastle must have perceived, because his expression was now that of helpless anger. Without waiting for his answer the Doctor turned to me.

“Come, Doyle,” said he quietly. I could hear Rucastle’s furious cries behind me as I followed him, though if they were articulate threats or mindless shouting I am at a loss to tell; most likely it was both, for I seem to remember him repeating again and again that the Doctor was the spawn of Hell and that we’d burn once the time came.

 

We’d come out into the narrow street that led away from the station. Thankfully, Crewe lacked the hideous slums and suburbs that were often to be encountered in the towns of our country, and of course in Edinburgh, which the Doctor so liked to curse. This was a city of the new century – clean like a church, neat, uniform. It had none of the dirt, but also none of the excessive splendour of London and Oxford; I’d have liked to think that it also lacked brothels, but at the time such establishments were more or less a given in any populated area.

There were no parks – instead, solitary trees were planted here and there, at times forming what looked like small jardins a la francaise, rather despondent now that they were stripped of leaves by the unusually frosty December.

For us, the absence of any greenery and any barocco houses with porticoes had one very practical consequence: we’d have no protection from the forthcoming wet storm that I could see boiling on the blackened horizon. That was why we soon found ourselves in the only forested part of Crewe: the city cemetery.

It was vast; indeed, there was something unsettling in the way it took up so much space as to form an oasis of quiet in the surrounding buzz of industrial life. The cypresses that Miss Hunter had mentioned closed their branches over our heads, rustling anxiously under the first blows of the humid wind.

I looked at their dark swaying crowns, and this measured, deliberate movement seemed to trigger some change in my thoughts. Something that had previously occurred to me only as a persistent suspicion was becoming clearer now; clearer, in fact, than ever before.

“You have always known,” I said quietly, shifting my gaze to Bell. He proceeded to walk forward, but his head was slightly turned, indicating that he was listening.

“You have known ever since you first realized that she was killed,” I accused, now with more bewilderment. The idea seemed to me inconceivable, and yet I was increasingly convinced of its truth. The Doctor did not speak still, but stared at me gravely and with undying attention, seemingly expecting me to go on. That confused me; his silence made me feel as though I had to prove it to him, which was an altogether ridiculous notion.

I gestured helplessly. In throwing the accusation at him I had not thought of definitive proof; all I had seemed to be circumstantial evidence, trifles that, taken by themselves, were hardly of any consequence.

But I needed to start somewhere. And was it not the Doctor who taught me that trifles were what truly mattered, after all?

“Do you remember what it was that you asked from Miss Hunter there, in the grove?” I began uncertainly. The question was silly, for of course he remembered; he did not seem to have an ability to forget. It was no wonder that his wife’s death was so hard on him, a man with a restless mind and extraordinary memory. “You asked her of Heather Rucastle.  You were already thinking that Rucastle knew Alice was murdered; it must have been nonplussing you that he did not seem to be particularly upset. And then there was the name...” irony flickered in his eyes, and I laughed back nervously, though I hardly felt any cheer, “a small detail, no doubt, and one that sounds nonsensical when taken out of the context, but to name her child after herself is so much like Miss Grace.”

“The character of the girl had further raised your suspicions. ‘She may sometimes appear odd; not quite there.’ With such a mother, could she ever be different? Of course these peculiarities sometimes occur for no reason at all; but it is undeniable that children are incredibly sensitive to the influence that is their parents. And you were already alert, already looking out for anything that could tell you more about the mysterious Alice Rucastle.”

“The fact that Mrs. Fogerty had only known her for a short amount of time before her death was, too, a telltale one. But the one notion that brought everything together into a comprehensible picture-“ I knew it now; the memories flared bright in my mind, and my voice rose a little, “-the one question that you could never stop asking yourself was _why would Cream choose the Copper Beeches when he had the entire world at his disposal?_ ”

“Indeed, there has never been a moment when you were not puzzling over it. You pretended to have no interest in it when it occurred to me; but in truth you only feared that I’d work it out the way you yourself already did. You lied to me, Bell.”

“I did no such thing,” he objected calmly. It was a relief to me that he spoke; come to think of it, he could refuse to either deny or confirm my theory. “It was your discovery of Cream’s association with the girl of whom we then thought as Alice that enabled me to find the solution. Yes, I have always been interested in it; and it is true that I suspected the existence of the second Alice from the moment in the grove. What could possibly tie Cream to the Rucastle family? I asked myself. You told me that he was a fiancé of Alice’s; very well; but why, exactly, would he ever wish to commit himself to such a relationship? It had to be something to do with one of us – or, more likely, with our cases. Since Alice was the key figure, she must have been the missing link. A person, then. A survivor. Somebody who is important enough for us to feel something towards. Really, it could be no one else but Miss Grace.”

“But you know the rules, Doyle. I do not speculate. I do not guess. I had a theory; one that was very likely to be the truth, but only a theory still. Just as I never told you of the mirror system and the ritual, I did not wish to introduce you to this particular chain of reasoning... And also, I did not-“ he hesitated for a moment, near-vulnerability in his expression, “I did not wish to lose your support. Your assistance has been invaluable to me; to throw it away so carelessly was more than I could afford.”

From the change in him, I could see the effect his words had on me was the one he feared.

“You must believe me,” he said quickly, “when I’m saying that I would be loath to hurt you regardless of our undertaking, and so soon after the deaths of your father and your wife. But I would not have chosen to leave you in the dark. It has been my opinion that it would do you good to learn her true fate.”

He undid the top buttons of his overcoat and rummaged through his breast pockets. With surprise I saw that he was offering me a neatly folded piece of paper; one I remembered well.

“Where does this come in?” I inquired, shifting my gaze from his face to the paper and back. The Doctor came closer to me, put it onto the nearest gravestone and unfolded it.

“It is the single conclusive evidence I have in favour of this theory,” he explained patiently. “Had Rucastle refused to testify, I might have used it. Though it would, of course, bring much complexity to the case.”

In front of me lay the CREWE cipher sent to me by Cream in the end of November, my notes written in blue pencil and all. The Doctor took out a pencil of his own and beckoned me closer, bending over the gravestone. I approached him.

“Look, Doyle,” said he, and drew a bow-like shape on the top of the note. Only two letters happened to be within its borders: _g_ in “amalgamation” and _r_ in “revolt”. “Remember that day when I said to you, and I quote, that ‘Smith’s death was his attempt to distract us from the only thing that truly interests him in Crewe – the estate of the Copper Beeches’? I thought then that, if the cipher ever turned out to be double, it would be something connected to the Copper Beeches that would be the key.”

He drew a series of small circles around other– seemingly random – letters. But I saw something vaguely familiar in the combination of those shapes, something I couldn’t quite put a name on. Was it a pattern of some sort?

Bell shrugged a little.

“The most obvious thing connected to the estate was the layout of its grounds,” he said. “The house and the trees. Topography played such a role in this case, after all. Cream is one for attributing much significance to the scenery; as he did in Dunwich, as he did here, in Crewe.”

Indeed, it made sense to me now; what he drew was a precise plan of the house, the front yard, and the alley leading away from the house and towards the grove.

“Read the letters in order,” said Bell, tapping the stone with his pencil.

 _Grace of Alice_ , it read.

“Grace,” I repeated in a whisper.

For some inexplicable reason it hurt me even now that it was her rotten and disfigured body that the police had lifted from the well on the yester night. I no longer felt any kind of love towards her; I do not think I had loved her at all since she had departed from Southsea. Her death was fitting, in a way. There was a kind of wild justice in the fact that she, herself guilty of murder, was killed by a maniac. And yet I could not help feeling pained at the thought that she perished so horribly and so miserably; I could not stop contemplating the extraordinary fate of the little Heather Rucastle – Heather Cream? – a child of two murderers and an orphan at the age of three. What lay ahead of her? Would she bear in her character any trace of her origin?

“You convinced Rucastle to testify so that Heather would not have to remain with the Rucastles when they are freed,” I said. The Doctor nodded. “So that either Mrs. Fogerty or Miss Hunter could take her.”

He nodded again, hid the ciphered note in his pocket, and pulled his gloves back on.

I could see big wet snowflakes being tossed around by the wind – they danced in the air only to be eventually thrown against a branch of a cypress or a gravestone. But it was no longer desperately cold.

“Well, Doyle,” said the Doctor. “After everything that happened, I feel that I have to ask this question again. Will you come?”

And he looked at me with some hesitation.

“Of course I will,” I replied, and stepped closer. This time, there was no line in wet sand, but I was conscious of crossing something of the sort – not of making a decision, exactly, for I had hardly given it any thought, but rather of making a statement of what I had long ago known to be the truth. Bell smiled at me, then, one of his rare smiles of genuine pleasure and happiness.

“If you think that Cream or anyone else, by any action, inaction, or temptation could make me hate you,” said I reproachfully, “then you think of me ill.”


	11. The Death of Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More than thirty years after his first encounter with Bell, Doyle wrote: "for some reason which I have never understood he singled me out from the drove of students who frequented his wards and made me his outpatient clerk". _More than three decades have passed_ during which he interacted and corresponded with Bell and he still has no damn idea. How ~~stupid~~ adorable is that?..

“I feel you ought to be aware, gentlemen, that Dr. Cream claims to have seen you murder Miss Grace.”

I exchanged glances with the Doctor.

“Am I to take it that you consider the claim false?” asked Bell.

“Absolutely,” said Moore. “It is true that he could have a good chance if he tried to deny the charges: the Rucastles can hardly be called unbiased witnesses, and neither Jean Fogerty nor Violet Hunter can provide any substantial information as to his crimes. But if he had been aware of the nature of Miss Grace's death prior to the twentieth of December, why did he not go to the police? Even if he did not try to compromise you - how come the sudden disappearance of his fiancee never alarmed him? And then there are the Lambeth murders, Doctor, which I should say are a highly suspicious affair.”

“And of course you seem unlikely suspects,” he tipped his hat lightly, and a corner of his unsmiling mouth with heavy lips hitched up. “You both have stainless reputations as medical men. Your colleagues speak very highly of you. Dr. Cream, on the other hand, has had a number of unpleasant episodes in his past – we know of at least two occasions on which his patients died after receiving his treatment, both during his years in America. In fact, it seems that he was forced to move in order to avoid prosecution.”

“And the fact that you keep calling him Dr. Cream instead of Patrick Baumann?”

“...means that we have contacted his family and confirmed his identity.”

“His _family_ ,” I repeated, in a disbelieving tone. The very idea sounded ridiculous to me. Of course I knew Cream had relatives; he wasn’t an orphan, after all, and I seemed to recall vaguely some talk of him having a brother. But to know that they existed was one thing; to realize that they were actual people and were about to learn of his crimes, a different thing entirely.

The Doctor was evidently impressed.

“Ah, good,” he said. “Very good. You must excuse me, Inspector Moore; efficient police work is not something I often have the pleasure of encountering.”

The sombre Moore smiled a little broader.

“At your service,” he said. “It is good to know that our work is appreciated.”

All pleasantries exchanged and all formalities settled, we were free to leave the city. Our train was due in an hour; Miss Hunter offered to take us to the station. Both Mrs. Fogerty and Heather expressed their wish to accompany her - Heather, in particular, seemed to be overjoyed at the weather. It was, indeed, a delightful day, with the snow glowing softly against the windows lit with peach-coloured light.

I found myself more than a little uncomfortable in the midst of that farewell party. It was not that I minded – not at all – I was simply not accustomed to being seen off. Heather’s presence bothered me, too, if in a subtle, odd way.

“Five,” said the Doctor with satisfaction.

“Oh?”

“He underestimated the Crewe police. You, Jefford, Bulweather, Miss Grace, and now, Moore with his lads. Positively I feel that this has been his undoing.”

“He underestimated you,” I responded, touching his gloved hand. Bell closed his eyes a little, his sharp features softening, and tightened his fingers on the silver knob of his cane.

 

The Crewe railway station was almost empty: it was Thursday, and most were busy at work. The platform was covered with untouched snow.

“Young Miss Hunter,” bowed the Doctor. She smiled a little sadly. “I wish you every luck. Please do inform me if I can be of any assistance; you know my Edinburgh address.”

“So I do,” she said. Her beautiful hair, which was beginning to grow longer, was gathered under her dark blue hat, leaving her face narrow and strangely naked. But there was a twinkle to her eyes that it warmed my heart to see. “But we’ll be fine. Thanks to you, we can take care of Heather; for now, this is enough for my peace of mind.”

Heather herself seemed to be unsure where to look. At first, the gaze of her round green eyes was wandering over the platform and the station, focusing on nothing in particular, but this soon bored her. Now she stared at me and the Doctor. Once Bell looked back at her, however, she became embarrassed and turned away. The outline of her gentle profile was clear in the cold colour of the sky, and it reminded me frighteningly of the other Heather.

I came a little closer to her. She raised her head, contemplating me inscrutably – she had not, I think, seen in me the intensity of expression that had scared her so in the Doctor.

There was nothing to be divined from her features: not a hint of emotion nor of recognition. Her eyes were empty, thoughtless, like dark and motionless water of a lake. But she was beautiful, in a way, a very pretty child.

“Heather,” I said hesitantly, and offered her a little smile. Something stirred in her face, as if she made an effort to understand, and I felt my heart leap. Then, gradually, her lips parted; her cheeks grew rounder; there could be no mistake – she was trying to smile at me in response, in a queer, awkward manner. She was like a mirror learning to take in shapes and make them into reflections.

“Hea-ther,” she repeated. I must have been smiling still, because her face lit up. She looked almost like any other three-year-old girl; a bit dreamy, perhaps, but undeniably better than on the yester night. And I realized that the sight of her no longer disturbed me.

I told her my name and she repeated that, too, clasping her hands against her chest.

“Arthur,” she said. “Arthur?”

I gave her a light clap on the shoulder, quite at a loss for words.

On our left, Bell, Miss Hunter, and Mrs. Fogerty were engaged in an animated conversation, seemingly paying no mind to our presence. Though it did not escape me that the Doctor had shot a couple of brief glances at us; I’d no doubt he’d heard our exchange.

“...formally, she is still Heather Rucastle,” Mrs. Fogerty was saying when I joined them. “It was Miss Grace’s choice. On paper, she has no known father.”

“Are you planning to change that?” asked the Doctor.

“God forbid. Better for her to have no father at all than to have one like this. And as to her last name, why, I thought that Grace was a very fitting one.”

I flinched.

“She shall become Heather Grace,” Mrs. Fogerty concluded with satisfaction. “Isn’t it an exceptionally pretty name? A beautiful fragrant flower and a divine virtue. I like it already.”

My first impulse was to object, naturally. But I caught Bell's eye; he seemed to be as calm as ever, and he nodded at me imperceptibly. I turned away at once. He was right; it would not do. The Portsmouth affair was to be laid to rest, Cream or no Cream.

And it was, after all, a poetic name.

Miss Hunter approached me hastily, blowing at her hands (they must have been cold under the fine fabric of her gloves). The snow dust that had settled on her clothes looked remarkably like powdered sugar, and it shone in the sun - a literal silver lining.

"Good-bye, Dr. Doyle," said she. "I did not have much of a chance to talk to you, which I regret. Any kind of friendship between us would be rather improper, of course; but more's the pity."

"It is," I agreed, and meant it.

She looked around a little furtively, especially, I think, wary that the omniscient Doctor should notice anything unusual, and quickly threw her arms around me.

"Please do hope for the best," she whispered, squeezing my hand, and walked away with swiftness. Stunned, I watched her go; and in that moment she rather reminded me of a girl trying to conceal her cheer upon stealing a chocolate.

 

I stepped into the quiet of my flat, blinking to adjust my eyes to the darkness, and was greeted with a gun being held in my face. For a moment neither I nor the man with the gun moved; then, he released a breath and gave a laugh of sheer relief.

“Arthur!” he said.

“Innes!”

Suddenly I was embraced in a most unceremonious manner, and there was nothing left for me but to hold him, my hands on his shoulder-blades. He was a surprisingly big boy – taller, I think, than I had been at his age.

“You utter, utter idiot,” he growled. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Nowhere,” blurted I, choosing the single stupidest answer there was. But I knew I could never tell him the truth, and at the same time I did not wish for him to believe any lie; in the face of this contradiction, being nonsensical made more sense than one’d have thought.

“Is it by any chance the same nowhere where Bell has disappeared? Because he is out of town, too.”

Innes held me by the shoulders now, trying to assume a look of irritation and failing miserably.

“I cannot tell you,” I said at last. “But Bell is fine.”

“It was not him I was worried about, you fool. If there is one man who is able to take care of himself, it is Dr. Joe. But what was I supposed to think about _your_ disappearance when you vanished on the very day when Louise-“ the words died on his lips, and he waved his hand wordlessly at me. “I feared you’d done something stupid. Hell, I did not know _what_ to fear. All kinds of wild notions occurred to me. How come you never told me you’d be away? I could only console myself by thinking that you and Bell had some kind of arrangement.”

“I’m sorry, Innes,” I said, pulling him closer. “I’m so, so sorry. I don’t believe I was thinking straight.”

“I know,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “I shan’t ask you about it.”

He proceeded to grab my sleeve and tug me in the drawing room.

“We have more exciting news, anyway,” he continued, shrugging. He took a fresh newspaper from the table and waved it in front of me. “The Lambeth Poisoner, they call him. Apparently he was murdering prostitutes in the Lambeth area of London. The city is buzzing with the news.” He took a look at the newspaper. “A certain Dr. Cream of Edinburgh University.”

I did my best to look casual. The strain of having to pretend to be unfamiliar with the name was combined with a sudden necessity to hide my sincere astonishment at the presumed nature of the charges; how the police could manage to connect Cream to the Lambeth murders was quite beyond me. I could only thank Heavens for Innes’s sheer obliviousness to the string of odd coincidences surrounding my unexplained absence from London and the arrest of the newly-christened Lambeth Poisoner – otherwise he would have undoubtedly found my facial expression highly suspicious.

As it is, he merely ushered me to the couch and poured us both some tea, for which I was genuinely thankful. And he did not speak of Louise, though no doubt it must have seemed odd to him that I had not so much as attended her funeral.

The reason behind such apparent negligence on my part lay in my relationship with the Hawkins family, of which Innes was only vaguely aware. Had it been not for Cream’s reappearance, I would have disregarded their dislike for me; but with Bell departing to Crewe in a matter of hours, I had only had so much time to make the decision. And I knew I had done the right thing. My poor sweet Louise would have forgiven me for not coming to say my farewell if she’d known what was at stake.

I thought of something to say and realized that I still had no idea what Innes was doing in my house.

“Whose revolver is it?” asked I.

“Yours,” Innes answered promptly. I raised an eyebrow. “The second one. I took it from the drawer.”

“Well, why ever would you do that? In any case, who gave you the key?”

He spoke with his eyes downcast.

“Your landlady did. And I figured- I figured, if some trouble had befallen you, I’d have a chance of finding out.”

“What trouble, Innes?” I asked, looking at him intently. There was a faint blush on his cheeks, but I could tell that he was reluctant to explain his chain of reasoning to me. Indeed, he did not answer; and I did not press him. But I realized then that he might have known more of my association with the Doctor than I had previously imagined.

 

I stayed at home for the next few days. I did not wish to think of what kind of dark and dangerous things could come upon me if Cream tried to drag me down with him. I did not wish to think of the possibility that my career would be ruined as well as that of the Doctor; that our reputations would be destroyed. One might say that I had resigned to my fate, whatever it might turn out to be. And I would have preferred to think of it in these terms; only I knew very well that what I had done was shut myself away from everything that was neither work nor writing. It is only vaguely that I remember any of my life during that week, the lukewarm breakfasts, the daily routine, the state of slightly bohemian disorder my flat entered after a while. I withdrew into myself, and I waited.

Did I blame the Doctor for not permitting me to kill our nemesis? Not – not _blame_ him, no. If anything, his determination to keep me from murder was one of the reasons why I failed so utterly at harbouring any bitter feelings towards him. And I knew now that he was right in saying that I could not have possibly walked away from Cream’s grave with a clear conscience and that I had been endangering my own sanity in my desire for revenge.

But it was also clear to me that much harm could come from his decision. I felt myself an animal hiding in the darkness, powerless to foresee or master its fate. The only news I received was from the newspapers (and it was not much); the Doctor seemed to have vanished altogether, leaving neither a note nor a clue as to where he might be. I guessed tentatively that he might have been engaged in the work associated with the Lambeth murders, and from the fact that he did not contact me I concluded that it was some kind of negotiations rather than forensics.

And so it came as a complete surprise when the next Sunday morning he turned up on my doorstep, clad in black as though for a funeral, to announce that Neill had been hanged. There was something at once grim and majestic about his bearing, an air that must have been communicated to me, too, because I gave no outward hint that there was anything important about the news. I merely looked at Bell, feeling my lips curve in a small odd smile.

“Well?” I asked.

“No,” he said, and there was a wild wave of sweet, fiery joy and triumph I was conscious of sweeping over my entire being. But again, outwardly I remained as calm as ever, and ushered the Doctor inside.

“Indeed, it is highly curious that he never did that,” proceeded Bell in the same resounding, ceremonious manner. Then he pulled his gloves off, his gaze wandering around the room, his voice slipping into a satisfied murmur with a hint of thoughtfulness. “Not a single mention of our names, not after Crewe. But there is something queer about his last words, nevertheless.”

“What did he say?”

“ _I am Jack the_ -“ the Doctor shrugged, “-and that was all.”

"The Ripper?" I continued, almost involuntarily.

“That was what everyone thought.” He accepted a glass from me. “Thank you.”

We raised our glasses silently. For there was hardly any need to indicate what it was that we were drinking to. The names of his victims were too numerous to recount; the emotions we experienced, too difficult to express.

“I care not about everyone,” I said at last. “What did _you_ think?”

The Doctor looked at me, motionless but for the play of light on his face. For the life of me I couldn’t guess what he was thinking in that moment, but I found myself quivering with excitement – I did not quite know why. It was the realization of Cream’s death, I imagine, catching up with me, hitting me like drunkenness.

“I believe that is what he meant to say, yes,” he answered at last. Then he turned to me sharply. “You are unaware of this, Doyle, but Dr. Henry Littlejohn and I know a lot about the Ripper case.”

"You were called upon,“ I whispered, and searched his face, daring not continue.

“In some sense. Not quite the way you’d think. But I am more than sure that Cream’s claim was a lie, mere boasting. It is madness I see in his last actions; he was tossing about like a man in agony. And this, his ultimate attempt to seek fame, to save himself for posterity. He could not become the embodiment of the future, so he tried to claim the past, to appropriate the one name he was certain London would remember. No mention of us - there is no sharing this kind of... macabre popularity.”

“For you see, the truth is that you have already destroyed him once. He escaped the fire in Dunwich, but in his mind, it never ceased to burn.”

 I gave a quiet excited laugh.

“Gone,” I repeated happily. “Gone, forever and ever, gone.”

The hint of craze in my voice must have alarmed the Doctor, because he reached for me and took me by the forearms. He could not, however, begin to bring me to my senses; for I had clung onto him in a most pathetic manner, speaking feverishly of Cream and of all the other subjects and topics that occurred to me at that moment. I was dimly aware that I was hardly making any sense at all, my monologue being a near-delirious string of descriptions and reminiscences. Most of them were those of Cream’s victims, of Elsbeth; but at some point I must have mentioned the affair of the Copper Beeches, too, though I do not know what part of that queer story I had blurted out to the poor Doctor.

“Doyle!” the Doctor cried quietly. I only trembled worse. The feeling of delight that had overtaken me was so intense as to be nearly painful, overwhelming. I think that in my euphoria I told Bell that I loved him; he failed to respond to that, apparently having reconciled himself with the fact that I was no better than drunk.

“And to think that you,” I laughed, “and the Ripper affair! With Dr. Littlejohn, was it?”

 I felt his fingers against my neck. Then he was tucking my hair behind my ears, smoothing it in a series of light touches, seemingly hesitant as to what to do next.

“Yes,” he said, and his voice faltered. “Yes, it was Littlejohn.”

“And the Lambeth murders, was it you? Did you tell Moore about them?”

“Yes. But it is not my merit, exactly, that these are amongst the charges. The police do seem to be getting better at their work. Not quite as bad as it was back in Edinburgh in 1876.” He spoke in a soothing manner now, his composure quite regained. My eyes were burning with tears, I found; but his intonation sounded to me better than the carol of bells on Christmas. “Maybe one day they’ll have no need for those like me.”

“No, no,” I stepped back, and wiped the tears off my cheeks. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling convulsively; but, whether because of the Doctor’s kindness or because I was shaken so badly, I felt little embarrassment. “No, that’s not going to happen.”

“It would not be a bad thing,” he replied, tentatively. And I believed that he had meant what he said; yet at the same time I remembered with vividness what he had told me once when I was his clerk. _Something happened that made me unsure how to go on; but then there was my work... like a miracle._

“Bell?” I whispered. He jerked his head up, and in the cold rose light of the London morning I could see anxiety written plainly on his face. “Tell me – what are you going to do now?”

“I’ll- I’ll go back to Edinburgh, I suppose. Once my business here is finished, I’ll go back and do what I have always been doing. It’s my work, laddie, and I trust I am still needed, the virtues of Inspector Moore notwithstanding.”

“Damn Inspector Moore to hell. God, if you only knew how glad I am that you are not giving this up. And you’ve no objection to me assisting you – have you, Doctor?..”

He looked at me very seriously.

“Not only do I have no objection, but I shall be honoured by that.”

“So I see,” I sighed. “What I don’t see is why. Surely it isn’t because you like me? Is it that you get lonely when working on your own? I’ve spent sixteen years with you and I still have not the foggiest as to why you’d single me out like this. ”

There was a pause. Not so much my question as the fact that I should ask it at all seemed to have nonplussed the Doctor, and now he blinked at me a little owlishly, his hands frozen mid-gesture. I almost expected him to say _why but this is elementary, my dear Doyle_.

“You know, of course, that I have worked alone before,” he said instead. “Before you’d come to the University, certainly, for the two years that had passed since Edith’s death, but also on other cases. Sometimes you were unavailable; sometimes, I did not wish to disturb you.”

“The Courtenay case?”

“For one, aye. Murder-suicide.”

He paced back and forth for a while, eyeing me with the same faint astonishment.

“And it is not that I have been unsuccessful. She’s happy now, the Courtenay lass, alive and free; if not for me, she would have been executed and buried in an unmarked grave instead.”

“No, I’ve succeeded at seeing to it that justice be done to her. And I am happy about that. But I had often contemplated the many crimes I’d dealt with, the many occasions on which I’d worked with the Edinburgh police or entirely on my own, and seen that there were countless more I’d never get my hands on; that my efforts were nought and nil. It seemed as though I were trying to change the world and failing. And then you, Doyle, you gave me hope. You were interested. You understood. Suddenly, it no longer felt like trying to scream with my mouth shut. You disagreed with me; to me, at served as a wonderful proof that you really saw the cases, the people, and the universe in general – you saw and observed. The intensity and sincerity of all your reactions were something I’d given up hope to encounter in the world where everyone trained himself to shut his ears and eyes to the suffering of others, to ignore and neglect the anguished.”

“You were willing to learn. There is no virtue quite as valuable as this.”

The Doctor walked to the window and drew shut the heavy brown curtains. But, despite the twilight that had now reigned in the room, I could see when he turned to me the warmth in his expression, distinct and unmistakable. Perhaps he, too, wasn't quite his usual self after the death of Cream.

“So, if you are quite sure you want to do it even now that the Cream affair is over and done with," he said, "we’ll go back to our blessedly humane criminals."

 

I felt that I owed something to them both for how good they were to me ever since the execution of Cream, but what I could give to either of them that I had not been ready to give before was hard to think.

On the other hand, maybe it didn’t have to be anything of great importance. Innes, for one, regarded even the tea in front of him with an expression of utmost pleasure, and I’d no doubt that any trifle had had a potential of gratifying him.

I dipped my cake into crème anglaise and gestured as nonchalantly as I could.

“Did you ever wonder why I did away with Holmes,” I said, my intonation not quite questioning. I didn’t think I would be able to eat the cake without risking choking on it, which was a pity, because I did like crème anglaise.

“I don’t care,” they cried in unison.

“-unless you are willing to tell me,” finished Innes.

“-it is none of my business, Doyle,” the Doctor was saying meanwhile. “You are mistaken in thinking that you are indebted to me when it comes to Holmes.”

They were clearly astonished and a little panicked that I should suddenly raise this topic, of all things, and I couldn’t help but feel smug.

“Though it is true that I feared that it had something to do with-“ Bell interrupted himself with an eloquent shrug. No matter; I knew what he meant. _Dunwich. Me. Cream_.

“Of course,” I said, implying _but not quite_. There was no communicating to him everything I wished to say on the matter, not with Innes in the same room. Already Innes was looking at us with much suspicion, and it immediately invoked in me the memory of his behaviour on the day of my return to London.

“Oh, fine,” said he at last. “I guess there must be a reason behind your not telling me this secret of yours. Go on, in any event.”

I smiled at him apologetically. We could not so much as promise to tell it to him some day; I, for one, often felt it would be best if we took it to our graves.

“Quit that,” snorted Innes. “I trust you both enough to believe that you know better. And besides, I’m far more interested in what you have to say on the matter of Sherlock Holmes.”

Bell did not utter a word. He simply studied me with an expression of troubled curiosity.

“I got sick of him,” I breathed out. The Doctor broke into an unrestrained smile.

“Well, what else is new,” said Innes, resentfully.

“No, no, that’s only the immediate cause. The more important question, of course, is why. What was it that prompted me to throw him off a waterfall? And the short answer to that,” I heard my own voice ring with remembered ire, “is his _bloody_ light-heartedness. The way he treats his cases like entertaining puzzles, the way he longs for a good mystery, for more complex crimes. I gave him the ‘game is afoot’ line and immediately hated him for that. He’s like a child in his desire to get better, shinier toys. I hate him for his cheeriness.”

“The passion with which people love these fairytales is positively disturbing. They care more about Holmes than they do about the real world. If they paid half as much attention to what is going on in their own city, crime would have been non-existent. But no, they are willing to overlook such trifles in favour of grieving for a fictional character!”

My audience looked stunned by this unexpectedly passionate outburst, and I became aware that I was clenching my hands into fists, my knuckles white. I looked down guiltily.

“This has nothing to do with real life,” I concluded, quieter now. “The Holmes stories are lies, deceit built on deceit, dishonesty born of dishonesty. I’m sick of lying to people.”

I raised my head. Neither Innes nor the Doctor spoke; Innes was ruffling his black curls in evident bewilderment. At this point I had no clue as to how to proceed, and I hid my face in my cup, unpleasantly conscious of the creamy taste the tea acquired. It was getting colder in the room, the sun settling down over the high London roofs, and the last sunbeams crawled up my wrists. I knew it meant the Doctor would not be here for long.

“It’s not that all lies are harmful, of course,” I said at length. “The character of Watson is a rather nice piece of fiction. The mysteries aren’t bad. I don’t think I would have minded writing it if it weren’t so popular.”

“And not everything is a lie,” I added, haltingly, and fell silent. Would it be too much if I mentioned the Method? Ah, damn. “I mean, Holmes’s deductions, they aren’t impossible.”

“Just improbable,” Innes grinned. “Sorry, Arthur, I couldn’t help myself. You made it too tempting.”

Though I had dealt him an irked glance, I was relieved by his teasing. If I was fortunate, he hadn’t been paying too much attention to all the implications my words had in regards to my relationship with the Doctor.

“And... the last words of The Final Problem,” continued I. “Watson meant that, but so did I. And not just about Holmes, either. _The best and the wisest man I’ve ever known_."

I was vaguely aware that what I’d said was all but inappropriate, and yet I could hardly bring myself to care. There was something liberating in that, in disregarding the ever present distance between myself and Bell. And the change in him was so extraordinary that I felt my throat tighten with tenderness.

“We may have to divide the epithets,” he said at last, and laughed a little breathlessly. His thin pale cheeks were ablush. Not as sensitive to flattery as Holmes, I surmised, but sensitive to _some_ form of flattery, at least. “I’ll be the wisest and you, the best. And we do need one for Innes.”

“The most beautiful,” responded Innes, “so that we’ll be like Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera.”

But there was the broadest of smiles on his face, his eyes shut in sheer pleasure.

“That’s it,” he declared, settling back on the couch and contemplating me and the Doctor with twinkling eyes. “I like it better this way. Looking at your despondent faces gets tiresome after a while.”

“Nonsense,” responded the Doctor. “I don’t look _despondent_.”

“Woebegone,” offered Innes. “Crestfallen? Funereal?”

“You are insufferable,” said I, and moved onto the couch to the left of the Doctor, the tea cup still in my hand. “Why are you sure you’ll make a better thesaurus than Dr. Bell?”

“Why are you sure I shan’t?”

He put his hands together, his fingers tucked in his sleeves, and curled up beside the Doctor. It was almost completely dark now; his hair was the blackest of blacks against the blackcurrant of Bell’s waistcoat, and I could make out freckles on his pallid face. He was grinning still, but there was a hint of peacefulness to his expression.

The Doctor didn’t seem to mind. Upon some hesitation I followed Innes’s example; Bell sighed audibly but otherwise remained quite impassive. His shoulder was warm, warmer than I expected, and I had a vague thought that the normal temperature of his body might be higher than ninety-nine.

“Surely it’s inconvenient for you to stay,” I murmured.

“No;” he said, lingering some. “Doesn’t matter a ha’penny. I’ve nothing for tomorrow morning.”

“Well, it’s all right then, I suppose,” said I, and took one of his hands in mine. He had long dexterous fingers, and they were warm, too, almost hot.

“Look,” whispered the Doctor at length. “Holmes is too light-hearted, and we are too grim. I believe we might do something about that, eh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you kindly for your attention. I hope it was entertaining :) Sorry for all the fluff. Not.
> 
> Btw, as to Cream, many of the details of his arrest are historically accurate (in particular, it is true that he tried - rather unsuccessfully - to frame two innocent people who happened to be medical men; I have always thought that Pirie had this in mind for the last books of the series).


End file.
